Here's the culmination of TOR's review of Jeff VanderMeer's Monstrous Creatures:
"While it seems the only monsters in this essay are the native animals—dolphins feasting unexpectedly at St. Mark’s, alligators, bears, herons, turtles—the piece is a nice conclusion to the monstrous theme by integrating the Romantic notions of sublimity. There is nothing more monstrous than the confrontation of Nature, an experience that is becoming more elusive everyday thanks to tourism, development, and the threat of man-made disasters. At the core of this sublimity, and what is at the core of most of this book, is that fantasy can be found in the most unlikely places, and is inevitably found in the last place you are looking: the real world."