The Florida Everglades: hundreds of square miles of cypress swamp, mosquitoes, gators, snakes; it’s the perfect place to get lost and never be found. It’s also the perfect place to live is you happen a cryptozoological phenomena called the Skunk Ape.
Possibly a distant cousin of Bigfoot, the skunk ape’s reported description usually closely follows those of its primitive relatives: about seven feet tall, flat-faced, broad-shouldered, covered with long hair or fur and reeking of skunk.
Sightings in Southeast Florida have been reported for decades.Dow Rowland, 54, a guide for
Everglades Day Safari, said he was hauling six British tourists up Turner River Road last week when they spotted the apeman loping along the cypress trees on the west side of the road, about two miles north of Tamiami Trail.
“It was about six feet tall with brown, long fur,” Rowland said. “It loped along like a big monkey or a gorilla, then it disappeared into the woods.” Big guy gets around! Rowland said his group was not the first to see the apeman this summer.
There were rumors in the 1960s of a Bigfoot or a really large skunk ape being held by the armed services at Everglades National Park. The skunk ape escaped by ramming itself through a concrete block wall, as the legend went.
Photo courtesy of FloridaSkunkApe.com
