Residents of Huntington Beach, California were baffled after thousands of mysterious gelatinous creatures washed ashore earlier this week.
The weird-looking blobs reportedly felt like jello and mystified even longtime beachgoers in the area.
When pictures of the oddities were posted online, the usual theories were offered, including the always reliable 'alien eggs.'
Fortunately, experts were able to identify the 'visitors' as merely sea cucumbers rather than the first generation of extraterrestrials poised to take over the planet.
Although the incident concluded with a prosaic explanation, the unexpected influx of the creatures left one longtime lifeguard musing that something seemed amiss in the air.
"There's all kinds of weird things happening," Claude Panis told the OC Register, "It's just strange."
Considering the many fantastic beasts known to lurk in the world's oceans, we can only image what may appear on the beach next.