Kids await return of Mr. Monster

MISSING —- The Mud Monster. Last seen hanging out at the preschool where children imagined him to life. Eight feet tall, approximately 150 pounds. Eyes as big as skillets.

If found, please return to the Grant Park Cooperative Preschool. Reward: children’s cheers.

Mr. Monster was gone when teachers arrived Wednesday at the preschool, located at St. Paul United Methodist Church. He’d stood outside the school for more than two years, where youngsters spent hours adorning him with marbles and other colorful things. Who would steal Mr. Monster? “I can’t imagine,” said Teresa Cole, the preschool’s director of operations.

A little history about Mr. Monster: Several years ago, children announced to their teachers that something lurked in the drains of Grant Park. On rainy days, it would slide a dirty arm out of his hidey hole and grab at whatever passed. It was the groan under the grates, the low chuckle at your feet.

Something so dreadful had to have a shape. In 2006 a parent banged together a wooden frame and brought it to the school, where kids covered it with untold layers of papier-mache. They began giving Mr. Monster a face —- eyes an owl would envy, a nose so big and yellow it resembled a bunch of bananas. And the teeth!

In the process, Mr. Monster became, well … less monstrous. The theft, of course, is a minor thing in the categories of crime. Reports of vehicle thefts and other crimes are all too common in the neighborhood. Someone recently stole chains from swings at the park’s playground, too.

And now? “It’s a sad statement, you know,” Cole said. “What’s going on in this neighborhood.”