San Francisco Blog

How's this for bizarre and depressing? Julio Vasconcellos, a member of the Experience Project (an anonymous experience-based community) uploaded photos of the police staring down at a manta (*or cow-nosed or bat) ray's corpse on Market Street at approximately 1:58 p.m. yesterday.

"When I got there, it was still alive and slowly dying -- just moving very slightly and less and less. Like a fish out of water. It was very sad," Vasconcellos tells The Snitch. Here's more from his EP entry:

The guy who called the police said that it actually flapped its way over to that part of the sidewalk from about 20 feet away, so it must have been alive when it was dropped there!

I wonder if this is some kind of protest against a company around there. Certainly got some attention as by the time I left there were 4 police cars and dozens of people gathered around it looking. Anyone have any ideas?

Oh and to add some morbid humor to this bizarre turn of events, one of the officers on the scene poured a half-empty water bottle on the poor creature... Maybe in hopes of magically reviving it...

See another photo of the sad scene here. Vasconcellos tells us he isn't sure what became of the creature's corpse:

"No one really knew what to do with it so everyone was staring at it. When I left one of the cops had just removed a large black trash bag from the trunk, presumably to put it in there and throw it out. The thing was real big (the picture makes it seem much smaller) and you'd need two people to pick it up. I don't think anyone wanted to touch it, but I'm guessing they eventually picked it up and got rid of it."

--Janine Kahn

*Thank you, ray-savvy readers.