Hairy skunk ape seems to have escaped extinction

By Billy Cox

The last time we peered into this species of mystery, about 10 years ago, the disappointing solution turned out to be two pinheads rotating in and out of a "Harry & The Hendersons" costume, scaring night-time motorists in Port St. John. Now that we've entered a new century, we certainly don't want to be irresponsible and start a needless panic. Nevertheless . . .

Skunk ape update No. 5,280:

Twelve-year-old Robert Sexton isn't prone to lying or fantasizing. At least, that's what his mom and dad, Karen and Michael, insist. So when the kid returned from a jaunt in the woods in mid-May, looking like he'd seen a ghost, they had to take him seriously.

It was getting on toward sundown, and Robert had wandered a mile or two into a tangle of woods bordering a new development west of Interstate 95 in South Brevard County. He'd played there before. His folks are building a house nearby.

"I heard this really big grunt, like a mean boar," recalls Robert, who's spent a great deal of time in the wilderness, hunting with his father. "And there was a bad smell. When I looked over, it was right there in the palm fronds."

From a distance of between 30 to 50 feet, the thing reared to a height of about 9 feet. In the dim light, Robert could make out few details about the critter's face. But it had blackish brown hair, resembled an ape, and was "definitely not" a boar, deer or anything else he'd ever seen. "We kinda stared at each other for about 30 seconds" before the rancid sucker took two large steps toward Robert, who did a Roadrunner and meep-meeped home in a squiggle of contrails.

Upon describing the encounter for his dad, Mike replied it sounded like the skunk ape. When he was a teenager, Mike and some buddies had run into something skunk apelike while hunting under a half moon.

Which raises the question: What does a skunk ape do to your property value?

Let's dispense with the disclaimers first. Bobbie Short, a Californian who investigates such truck for her www.bigfootencounters.com Web site, brushes off most Florida hominid reports: "(There is) no actual evidence of corroborating witnesses to suggest that Florida has a viable population of anything remotely close to Sasquatches . . . (such) as we see in the Pacific Northwest."

But we all know creepy stuff happens in the Skank Coast boonies, stuff that never gets explained. Like the cattle mutilations on the Platt ranch in 1996-97, some of which involved the extraction of eyes, tongue, ears and genitalia. Or the exsanguination of 18 Valkaria chickens in 2002. The conventional theory was, a weasel had tunneled through the coop and drained them of all blood, but to others (me), it mirrored the handiwork of chupacabras, the fabled goatsuckers of Latin America with red eyes and razored claws.

We won't publish the exact whereabouts of this latest skunk ape sighting, lest it turn the neighborhood into a shooting gallery for trophy hunters. But attention developers: You might want to consider the legal ramifications of nondisclosure next time you raze rural land spooked by tales of cattle mutilations, chupacabras and skunk apes. Given the apocalyptic hell-broth of lawsuits awaiting the first unspeakable horror visited upon new residents, it might be cheaper in the long run to fence it off and develop ecotours.

For a reasonable fee, I could even be a consultant.

From: Florida Today, 3 June 2004.