Sunday’s Get Fuzzy revolved around the Hartlepool monkey incident. According to local legend, a French ship ran ashore outside of Hartlepool, England during the Napoleonic Wars. The only survivor that the Hartlepudlians found was the ship’s mascot, a bedraggled monkey clinging to the flotsam. After seeing the monkey in its little sailor outfit and hearing its gibberish, the locals determined that the monkey was a French spy and sentenced the monkey to death by hanging. Most historians believe this to simply be an apocryphal story, however. Hartlepool was well known as a seafaring town and the idea that nobody in a city populated by sailors would recognize a monkey is hard to believe.

The Hartlepool legend, however, is now part of the town’s psyche. Schoolchildren recite various versions of the story and do school projects about the legend. The football club’s mascot, H’Angus the Monkey, was ran as an independent for the mayor’s seat and won. There is a darker side to the myth, however. There are some people who believe that the monkey legend was invented by “the authorities” to cover up an alien spaceship crash near Hartlepool.

Of all the English football mascots, the sexiest is Exeter City’s Athena the Goddess, the gayest is Peterborough United’s Mr. Posh and the rest are all furries.