Hast thou seen the jabberwock?

Bill Sweetman is snipe hunting over at Ares:

Someone going by the name Mackbolin posted this image on file-sharing site LiveLeak on May 8.

So far, efforts to ID or contact the poster have been fruitless. The discussion over at Dreamland Resort has been inconclusive, with noted X-plane hunter Peter Merlin leaning towards the “hoax” side.

On the other hand, the pic has passed one suggested hoax test on DLR. It’s also free of some of the other trace scents of rat. It doesn’t overtly contravene the laws of physics or optics; you could take such a photo from a vantage point on the ground. It doesn’t look like an ordinary airplane seen from an odd perspective (it’s easy to misinterpret against a blue-sky background). The sighting was (ostensibly) in a pretty remote end of California…

Despite gross similarities, it’s not an SR-71. The Blackbird’s are all retired, had a tailcone that this planform does not and did not have notched edges on the wing root. And it could be something novel: Sweetman points out, there’s been a lot of construction at Elvis’ retirement home. But the poster’s story about feeling a “microwave” effect as the jet flew over leaves me smelling teh rat.