Trident-Tailed Sea Monster

There's a video that's been making the rounds on the Internet for quite some time, purporting to show a Florida "sea monster" with a three-forked tail. The creature gained nationwide attention after being featured on the TV show MonsterQuest on the History Channel.

It almost certainly seems to be a mere manatee, but there's just no getting around that manatees do not possess trident tails. This obvious drawback has baffled skeptics who, against the evidence, still insist it just must, somehow, be a manatee.

Well, in this case, the skeptics may be right. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission discovered a manatee likely to have been injured by a boat propeller (and possibly more than once) at some point in the past, with its tail deformed into three separate parts. Because of the unusual shape of the manatee's tail, it leaves a very distinct triple wake on the water’s surface while cruising just below it.

Bigfoot's Arm

Cryptozoologists are abuzz about the find of a large non-human arm in the wilderness of Liberty County, near Tallahassee. It's being sent to a lab for study, in hopes that it might prove once and for all the existence of Bigfoot. (Or, as we call him around here, the "Skunk Ape".)

I have to say there is every possibility this will turn out to be a large monkey's arm. Though the Skunk Ape hunters who found the specimen say "there are no bears or monkeys in this area", there's simply no way to state that with certainty. As readers of this blog are aware, monkeys have been escaping and reproducing like mad all over the state for decades now, and they don't always follow predictable patterns of territory - as we've seen with Cornelius the macaque in St. Petersburg.

But I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Developing...

Sanibel Sea Serpent

I just recently became aware of a YouTube video of an alleged sea serpent in the waters off Sanibel Island. The people who saw the creature described it as having a head which "resembled a sea otter" and a body which "looked like a giant 20 foot plus snake".

Nothing shown in the video remotely looks like what they have described, and to everyone's great misfortune it appears the couple who video-recorded the thing stopped recording after only 54 seconds. In truth, the dark rotund thing whose back appears briefly breaking the water looks to me like a manatee or young whale. Cool, but relatively ordinary. (And for Heaven's sake, people, stop calling it "the Loch Ness Monster". The Loch Ness Monster is in Loch Ness.)

But as Jay Cooney points out, Scott Marlowe's The Cryptid Creatures of Florida tells anecdotes about similar sounding sea serpents with mammalian heads:

"Two navy men stationed at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station reportedly observed a long-necked animal with 'antennae' atop a head similar to that of a dog. Two fishermen reported a similar animal on a separate occasion, reflecting some of the 'cadborosaurus' reports from British Columbia... Alleged Florida 'sea monster' footage taken by Gene Sowerwine caused much excitement when it was revealed on an episode of MonsterQuest in 2007, but it was later found to show a manatee with an injured tail and a wayward bearded seal."

Then, too, let's remember the 1901 report of an Everglades sea monster said to have a head like a cross between a deer and a catfish. But until someone shows me a specimen of something, I'm not buying any of it.

John's Pass Bigfoot Exhibit

Whether you call it Bigfoot, the Skunk Ape, or the Bardin Booger, you're sure to be interested in this exciting exhibit offered in John's Pass Village, of a plaster cast footprint alleged to be his.

The Bardin Booger

As mythological creatures go, the "Bardin Booger" is unfortunately at the bottom of the ladder of success. It has a stupid name - doesn't have a cool ring to it like "The Loch Ness Monster" or "The Abominable Snowman". And unlike Nessie, Yeti, and Sarasota's Skunk Ape, we don't even have an alleged photo of it. Sucks. Even the Weekly World News, who escalated "Bat Boy" into national fame, tried and failed to turn the Bardin Booger into a thing.

So what do we have? Well... some guy in Bardin, FL said he saw a Bigfoot-like creature, way too tall and huge to have been a misidentified macaque. It has been described as having nine toes on each foot, which is a bit improbable but I think I can flog my suspension of disbelief into accepting it.

Some versions of the story have the critter carrying a lantern, though.

Hunh. Well now. Hmmmm. *cough*

If that's the case, then this is likely not a cryptid but a feral human, perhaps. (The attentive reader may be aware I once toyed with authoring a book on the subject of feral humans, and may toy with it again one day, and was a guest on Art Bell's Coast To Coast show discussing said phenomenon.)

After the first sighting of the Bardin Booger became public, some other guy emerged and said he saw it too. And after the media picked up on the story, suddenly everybody and their brother popped up to get on the bandwagon and report a sighting. I can forgive denizens of the 70s and 80s for not having a camera on them, but in this modern space-age smartphone world, by now I would have expected some sort of blurry digital approximation of a blob that could be our man.

That hasn't stopped locals from merchandising the concept to death, of course. I applaud their efforts, but I'd rather have a Skunk Ape t-shirt instead, thanks.

The 1901 Everglades Monster

From the New York Times, December 1, 1901: a news report of a Florida outdoorsman named Buster Ferrel ("one of the boldest and most noted hunters of Okeechobee") who killed a giant sea-serpent of unknown type. The enormous creature was snakelike in appearance, it's said, with ears like a deer and feelers around the face like a catfish. It was so large that it would prey on animals as large as deer and wild hogs.

The piece recounts how Ferrel shot the creature as it fled, then discovered its carcass four days later beset by vultures. He chopped off its head and saved the skull as a memento, but then had second thoughts about the value of the unknown creature to science, and so vowed to go back into the swamp and try to recover the skeleton. The article ends by stating Ferrel's intent to donate the remains to the Smithsonian.

So what happened next? No one knows. There are no follow-ups to the report. The same article appeared, unattributed and with some portions slightly altered, in the January 5, 1902 edition of the Clinton (Iowa) Morning Age. I fear the entire story may be a fabrication. There's something literary about the way the uncredited writer of the piece tells the story in a bit too much flowery detail, and the fact that the story is said to be out of Jacksonville gives me pause. (Jacksonville, as you may be aware, is nowhere near the Everglades.)

Did Buster Ferrel even exist? Apparently so. There's a passing reference to him in the Kissimmee Valley Gazette, April 22, 1898:

"A man by the name of Davis that was cut by Arthur Speer of Orange county some time ago died at Buster Ferrel's camp on Okeechobee beach last week of blood poison caused from a deep gash under his shoulder blade. I guess speer cut deeper than he meant."

Some have speculated, fancifully, that perhaps the entire story is true but that Mr. Ferrel never returned from his subsequent visit to the swamp and so the entire matter was forgotten by those newspapers up north. One day perhaps someone will shed further light on the mystery for me.

St. Augustine Sea Monster

On November 30, 1896, two young boys bicycling on Anastasia Island, off the coast of St. Augustine, made a frightening discovery: an enormous dead sea creature's decomposing carcass washed up along the shore.

They notified a local physician, Dr. DeWitt Webb, the founder of the St. Augustine Historical Society and Institute of Science, who visited Anastasia Island the following day to inspect the creature. It was very pale pink, almost white, and glistened with a silver reflection in the sunlight. It was of a hard rubbery consistency, and could only be cut into with great effort. Despite this fact, the body was severely mutilated - presumably by sharks - and from all outward appearances seemed to be explained away best by being the remains of a giant octopus, having the stumps of four arms, with a severed arm buried nearby.

The carcass was half buried in the sand under its immense weight, but the part of the carcass that was visible above the sand measured 18 feet in length and 7 feet in width. Dr. Webb estimated its weight to be at least 5 tons. Numerous photographs were taken and drawings were made before the carcass washed in a storm that dragged it back out to sea. But shortly thereafter it came back, washing up on Crescent Beach, two miles south of its first location. Dr. Webb arranged for the creature to be hauled away, so that it would not be lost again to the ocean. It was moved to a spot next to a South Beach hotel, where it became a tourist attraction gawked at by large numbers of visitors.

What happened after that is murky. No one seems to know what became of the mystery carcass. Did they eventually get sick of its rotting smell when the following summer came? And if so, how did they dispose of it, since it was only dragged to the hotel with great herculean effort and, literally, a team of horses? Much written anecdotes exist from newspapers and magazines telling of the lump's discovery and subsequent analysis, but nothing tells of where it ended up.

The monster's legend didn't stop there, however. In 1957, a curator at Marineland who read of the old stories about the blob that washed ashore on Anastasia, and after making some inquiries found that tissue samples still existed at the Smithsonian Institution. He arranged for a biologist, Dr. Joseph F. Gennaro Jr., to analyze the sample, and Dr. Gennaro declared in the March 1971 issue of Natural History:

After 75 years, the moment of truth was at hand. Viewing section after section of the St. Augustine samples, we decided at once, and beyond any doubt, that the sample was not whale blubber. Further, the connective tissue pattern was that of broad bands in the plane of the section with equally broad bands arranged perpendicularly, a structure similar to, if not identical with, that in my octopus sample.

The evidence appears unmistakable that the St. Augustine sea monster was in fact an octopus, but the implications are fantastic. Even though the sea presents us from time to time with strange and astonishing phenomena, the idea of a gigantic octopus, with arms 75 to 100 feet in length and about 18 inches in diameter at the base—a total spread of some 200 feet—is difficult to comprehend.

In 1986, another scientist investigated all over again, and came to a similar conclusion:

I conclude that, to the extent the preserved O. giganteus tissue is representative of the carcass washed ashore at St. Augustine, Florida, in November 1896, it was essentially a huge mass of collagenous protein. Certainly, the tissue was not blubber. I interpret these results as consistent with, and supportive of, Webb and Verrill's identification of the carcass as that of a gigantic cephalopod, probably an octopus, not referable to any known species.

But in 1995, yet another scientist disputed these findings, stating, "the St. Augustine carcass was "the remains of a whale, likely the entire skin [blubber layer]... nothing more or less."

So now who knows what to think. The more recent the scientific inquiries, the more weight their verdict should carry, due to their advanced technology, right? But I've been up and down the block in this burg called Earth long enough to know that I'd believe an 1896 or 1957 scientist over these modern-mindset ones. I trust 'em about as far as I can throw 'em. I remain content having no clue whether this beach blob was a giant squid, an octopus, a whale, or something else entirely. Only the blob knows for sure and he isn't telling.

"Skunk Ape" in Sarasota?

Since the 1960s, Florida's own version of Bigfoot - known as The Skunk Ape - has been reported roaming the swamps of the Sunshine State. And now, the latest sighting has been captured in video and still images by numerous eyewitness. Something was seen slogging with an apelike gait across the marsh in Sarasota's Myakka River Park, maybe a Skunk Ape, maybe a bear, maybe some drunk dressed in black motorcycle gear, I dunno.

The audio portion of the video below, taken from a Mysterious Universe podcast, is interesting, as it contains a discussion of people trying to photograph the creature being harassed by park rangers who literally give them the "move along, citizen, nothing to see here" treatment.

In 2000, two photographs seeming to depict the Skunk Ape were anonymously mailed to the Sarasota County Sheriff's Department. They were accompanied by a letter from a woman who claimed to have photographed what she thought to be an escaped orangutan in her back yard, and that the creature had returned to her home four times to steal apples from her back porch. Consistent with Skunk Ape lore, the woman said:

"I judge it as being about six and a half to seven feet tall in a kneeling position... It had an awful smell that lasted well after it had left my yard. The orangutan was making deep "woomp" noises."

The creature in the anonymous photos is clearly not an orangutan, yet seems genuinely simian and feral, with matted hair and a patch of grey around its muzzle. Fortunately the woman used a flash for the photo which illuminated many details of the creature perfectly. Two clues point to the whereabouts of the woman's yard: the woman in the letter stated that she lives near I-75, which just happens to run along the very southernmost portion of Myakka River State Park, and paranormal researcher Loren Coleman managed to track down the developer source of the photos to the Eckerd Drugs photo lab at the intersection of Fruitville and Tuttle in Sarasota.