Unsuspecting student Barry Harnass was not prepared for his startling discovery last Wednesday of a subterranean species inhabiting the underground tunnels on the University of Massachusetts campus.
“I was trying to get to my class in Bartlett Hall by taking the tunnel in Herter, and I just saw this ball of fur to the side of the wall,” Harnass, 20, told Morning Wood. “Next thing I know, it was actually just a dude covered in hair. I probably would have been more shocked, but I just thought it was Joey from my comp-sci class taking a nap.”
This has not been the first sighting of these creatures. Biology professer Otto Ringman has dedicated his career to studying the cave-dwellers, or Cro-Massnums.
Ringman said that the vast amount of construction in the area has “forcibly removed” the cave people from their homes, with relocation as their only form of adaptation.
“Seeing the cave people displaced around isolated areas such as the tunnels linking academic buildings may become common as construction continues to expand across campus,” he added.
According to Ringman, Cro-Massnums have been living underneath the W.E.B. DuBois library for approximately 4,000 years. The species was first discovered by Ringman’s great-great-great grandfather, Dr. Philipp Ringman, around the same time UMass was founded in 1863.
The notes left behind by Philipp Ringman state that the name of the creatures did not originate from the location of the species , Massachusetts, but from the Latin “chronos massus,” which translates to “hairy humanoid beast things.”
Though the warm-blooded bipedal figures resemble humans closely, they have an incredibly thick external layering of hair. They have the ability to vibrate through the ground and walls, and use such tactics to hunt for food. While they started out as a non-lethal, peaceful species that gathered berries and plants for survival, the ever-increasing amount of students admitted to the University has caused a radical change in diet and exponential spike in Cro-Massnum bloodlust, turning their food of choice to straggling students late to class.
One former underground dweller, Grog Ug-Chugga, was found rolling around the leftover cigarette debris and dirt by Bartlett Hall. When asked about the construction, Ug-Chugga could not hold back tears.
“My entire lineage is here at UMass,” Ug-Chugga said. “I can’t explain how upset my wife and I are that our children will not have the same experiences we had growing up.”
He added that he would be “disgusted” to migrate to another campus such as Amherst College, saying, “It smells like old, decomposing money.”
As construction sites increase on the UMass campus, the inevitable migration of the UMass Cro-Massnums looms, Ringman said he will devote the next few weeks to study patterns of their movements, as the new location of the cave dwellers’ home has yet to be decided.
Jeremy Passover can be reached at [email protected].
