Sherlock Holmes once told Watson cryptically about the "giant rat of Sumatra." The terrible truth about the creature, Holmes said, is one "for which the world is not yet prepared." It was a lovely moment of conjuration: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle suddenly, out of nowhere, created the hairy monster, and just as suddenly he whisked it out of sight: the world was not yet prepared to confront the horror. So the giant rat lingers in the mind as an enigmatic apparition.
Interestingly, there does exist an animal called the giant rat of Sumatra, just as there does exist a beast called...
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