Photo by Richard Turner.

io9 is asking for help on behalf of a reader who found a horrible tentacle-thing on the ground in Stockholm, Sweden. He wants help identifying it, presumably so that when he gets devoured his next-of-kin knows where to search for its lair. I’m gonna go with “the unholy offspring of a sea urchin, an Elder God, a Koosh ball, and a carrot.”

According to io9, submitter Richard Turner “described the mass as unusually soft, almost like jello, a characteristic he deduced by poking at it with a pen,” which ruins my theory that it’s some kind of mutated root ball (unless it’s just rotten?). It’s fist-sized, and it’s not attached to the ground — just lying on the grass, like the worst sunbather imaginable. And Turner says it appears to be organic, not a prop for a terrifyingly realistic game of “Call of Cthulhu.”

If you’ve got ideas for what the hell this thing could be, go post them at io9. And do it fast, before they take over.

UPDATE: Apparently it’s not organic at all — it’s a mangled dog toy. I’m not sure I would let my dog put that in his mouth, even when it was brand new!