The Texas coast is getting waves of strange plastic dolls washing up on shore. Perhaps the only thing scarier than a creepy clown is a creepy doll, its dead eyes looking at you and its mouth set in a frozen smile. Now imagine one with a sea snail crawling out of its eye socket.
Workers at the Mission-Aransas Reserve have been gathering the plastic monstrosities off the beaches for months now and they aren’t sure where they are coming from. Most of the toys are being discovered about 140 miles Southeast of Houston.
The phenomenon is enough to creep out TV host John Oliver who says he will offer up $10,000 to get rid of them. Photo: Mission-Aransas Reserve
“Burn them now,” Oliver said on his show Last Week Tonight. “I hate the dolls so much.”
The dolls have all kinds of anomalies thanks to the ocean environment. Researchers have gathered lots of dolls, some with barnacles attached to their eyes, while others are missing limbs or other body parts.
Even though the toys look like something twisted Sid would make in Toy Story, they have proven useful for education and conservation.
Jace Tunnell, the director of Mission-Aransas Reserve says if anything the dolls are a reminder of pollution and how plastic is a major problem that affects wildlife. Photo: Mission-Aransas Reserve
The dolls are making a difference though. The Reserve has sold a lot of them with the money going toward helping rehabilitate sea turtles.
But John Oliver is convinced wherever they are floating in from is unnatural.
“Apparently experts say it is unknowable (to know where they came from) and that these dolls could actually be coming from anywhere in the world,” Oliver said. “Now, I am worried, that each and every one of them is coming from a little girl who is four thousand years old, lives on a floating Victorian house that haunts the Gulf, and holds the devil in her little heart.” Photo: Mission-Aransas Reserve