FARRADAY: A frog holocaust is currently being executed, Dr. Bailey, and man is the executioner.

BAILEY: You're the biologist, Dr. Farraday. You've never heard of survival of the fittest?

FARRADAY: Don't forget that rule also applies to mankind. You can't turn your back on nature, or nature will turn her back on you!

MULDER: Dr. Bailey's not the first person to go missing from Heuvelman's Lake recently. Two weeks ago, a Boy Scout Troop was out here, fox hunting, their troop leader wandered off to relieve himself, and hasn't been seen or heard from since.

SCULLY: So you think that there's a serial killer at large?

MULDER: The operative word being "large".

MULDER: Dr. Farraday, you know the wildlife living around this lake just as well as anybody, don't you?

FARRADAY: I'd say that's accurate.

MULDER: Are you aware of any indigenous species that's capable of attacking a human being?

FARRADAY: Yes. Another human being.

FARRADAY: See, this is what always happens. This is how it starts.

MULDER: What?

FARRADAY: The deflection, sleight of hand. See, whenever an issue requires any real thought, any serious mental effort, people turn to UFO's, and sea serpents and sasquatch. Afternoon talk shows and tabloid TV. They've reduced our attention span to the length of a sound byte.

MULDER: A prehistoric animal living in a lake is not without precedence. Last August they pulled a Bull shark from Lake Onaga in Massachusets.

FARRADAY: An anomaly. Which proves nothing. It only serves as fodder for psuedo-scientists with nothing better to do than chase fairy tales.

MULDER: It's been reported for centuries in dozens of countries. From the monsters in Loch Ness, Nessie, to the Ogopogo in Lake Okonagan.

SCULLY: And Lake Champagne, Lalavack Iceland...

MULDER: Sounds like you know a little something about the subject.

SCULLY: I did as a kid. But, then I grew up, and became a scientist.

MULDER: Well some very grown up crypto-zoologist believed it could be an evolutionary throwback, quite possibly prehistoric.

SCULLY: An aquatic dinosaur.

MULDER: A pleosaur, actually. Though admittedly, there's not a lot of hard evidence to back that up.

SCULLY: You know why? Because those creatures don't exist, Mulder. They're folk tales born out of some collective fear of the unknown.

MULDER: Well how many folk tales do you know that could eat a boy scout leader and a biologist?

MULDER: It's Scout Woolsley. The boy scout troop leader.

SCULLY: Well, his fly's undone.

MULDER: Are you insinuating something?

SCULLY: No, most drowning victims are found with high levels of alcohol in their blood and their flies unzipped. While urinating over the sides of boats, docks or whatever, they lose their balance, fall in and drown.

MULDER: Still doesn't explain why half of him is still missing. Looks to me like something took a big bite.

SCULLY: Maybe not so big.

MULDER: What do you mean?

SCULLY: Well, fish eat decomposing matter, any body that's been suspended in this environment for a period of time is going to become a food source. We eat fish, and fish eat us.

MULDER: But are fish also known for eating half and saving half for later?

MULDER: I'm sorry about Queequeg. You know, I think I've learned something from these photos.

SCULLY: Mulder...

MULDER: They're not pictures of the lake monster, they're pictures of the lake. Locations where the fish has been sighted over the past several years. Look, five years ago, all the sightings occured in the center of the lake. But progressively the sightings have moved closer and closer to shore, until this year, they're practically on the shore.

SCULLY: Could you repeat that last part again? I kind of faded out.

MULDER: Which part?

SCULLY: After you said "I'm sorry"?

MULDER: I know the difference between expectation and hope. Seek and ye shall find, Scully.

SCULLY: You know, on the old mariner's maps, the cartographers would designate uncharted territories by writing 'Here Be Monsters'.

MULDER: I got a map of New York City just like that.

MULDER: When you're living in the city you forget that night is actually so...dark.

SCULLY: Living in the city you forget a lot of things. You know what I was just thinking about, being mugged or hit by a car, it's not until you get back to nature that you realize that everything is out to get you. So my father always told me to respect nature, because it has no respect for you.

MULDER: That was him, Scully, that was Big Blue.

SCULLY: So what if it was. Mulder, what are we doing here?

MULDER: What do you mean, what are we doing here?

SCULLY: What are you hoping to accomplish?

MULDER: Scully, some of the things that we investigate are so intangible but this creature it exists within the specific earthly confines of this lake, and I want to find it.

SCULLY: What for?

MULDER: You're a scientist, why do you ask that question? I mean, it would be a marvelous discovery, it could revolutionize our evolutionary biological thinking.

SCULLY: You know when you showed me those pictures the photographer took, you want to know what I really saw in them?

MULDER: A tooth?

SCULLY: No, you. That man is your future. Listening only to himself, hoping to catch a glimpse of the truth, for who knows what reason.

MULDER: You don't think my reasons are legitimate?

SCULLY: Mulder, sometimes I just can't figure them out.

MULDER: I'm still tempted to fire. Hey, Scully, you think you could ever cannibalize someone? I mean if you really had to.

SCULLY: Well as much as the very idea is abhorrent to me, I suppose under certain conditions a living entity is practically conditioned to perform whatever extreme measures are necessary to ensure its survival. I suppose I'm no different.

MULDER: Why did you name your dog Queequeg?

SCULLY: It was the name of the harpoonist in Moby Dick. My father used to read to me from Moby Dick when I was a little girl, I called him Ahab and he called me Starbuck. So I named my dog Queequeg. It's funny, I just realized something.

MULDER: It's a bizarre name for a dog, huh?

SCULLY: No, how much you're like Ahab. You're so consumed by your personal vengeance against life, whether it be its inherent cruelties or mysteries, everything takes on a warped significance to fit your megalomaniacal cosmology.

MULDER: Scully, are you coming on to me?

SCULLY: It's the truth or a white whale. What difference does it make? I mean, both obsessions are impossible to capture, and trying to do so will only leave you dead along with everyone else you bring with you. You know Mulder, you are Ahab.

MULDER: You know, it's interesting you should say that, because I've always wanted a peg leg. It's a boyhood thing I never grew out of. I'm not being flippant, I've given this a lot of thought. I mean, if you have a peg leg or hooks for hands then maybe it's enough to simply keep on living. You know, bravely facing life with your disability. But without these things you're actually meant to make something of your life, achieve something earn a raise, wear a necktie. So if anything, I'm actually the antithesis of Ahab, because if I did have a peg leg, I'd quite possibly be more happy and more content not to be chasing after these creatures of the unknown.

MULDER: The frogs.

FARRADAY: I beg your pardon?

MULDER: The unexplained depletion of frogs originates from this cove. It's the food chain.

FARRADAY: What about it?

MULDER: Food chain. If you alter one life form in an ecosystem, the rest is necessarily affected, either by an increase or decrease. So if an aquatic dinosaur's diet consisted primarily of frogs, then if those frogs suddenly became scarce, it would have to search for an alternative food source.

SCULLY: A human?

FARRADAY: That's crazy. If something was living in these waters, you don't think I would have seen it? I've been conducting research here for three years.

MULDER: I'm talking about a prehistoric creature that's gone unnoticed for virtually thousands of years. If it knows how to do anything, it knows how to hide. They say that the Loch Ness monster doesn't even live in the water, that it lives in the surrounding cliffs. Maybe Big Blue has an inland habitat, somewhere in the rocks, or in this dense forest here.

SCULLY: Well, you slew the big white whale, Ahab.

MULDER: Yeah, but I still don't have that peg leg.

SCULLY: How can you be disappointed? That alligator would have gone through half the local population if you hadn't killed it.

MULDER: I know. I guess I just wanted Big Blue to be real. I guess I see hope in such a possibility.

SCULLY: Well, there's still hope. That's why these missing stories have endured. People want to believe.