In the state of Illinois, there are apparently cryptids such as giant birds, for which human children are suitable prey in size.
There are several stories of seeing these birds in Illinois and neighboring states, and one of them, the very first, even got into the local press and had a lot of resonance.
On July 25, 1977, 10-year-old Marlon Lowe played near his home near the Kickapu River fields and near the town of Lowndale, Logan County.
Suddenly, from somewhere in the sky, two giant birds appeared, seemingly similar to condors. Condors are the largest flying birds in the Western Hemisphere, weighing up to 15 kg and can reach 130 cm in length, but not a single condor would venture to attack a 10-year-old child, he is too large for them.
These birds were, firstly, much larger, and secondly, they flew into Martin and one bird grabbed him by the clothes with its claws and immediately lifted him into the air to a height of a couple of meters and carried him to the side. No condor would be able to do this, because their paws are simply not equipped to lift something from the ground and keep it in flight.
The boy screamed loudly, and his mother Ruth came running to his noise, who, seeing how the birds were holding her twitching son in the air, screamed even more. From this noise, the bird unclenched its claws and the boy fell to the ground. Both birds immediately flew away.
In addition to Martin's mother, six more people saw this incident and they then described it in the same way. The birds were dark plumage and with a white ring of feathers around their heads like condors, their necks were long, and their beaks were 6 inches (15 cm) long and curved at the end. The birds had three toes in the front and one in the back on their paws.
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When the media began to write about this case, poor Marlon got the nickname "Bird Boy" at school and even his classmates ridiculed him. And the boy's mother even once found a dead dove on her porch, someone threw it to her as a joke.
However, the boy's parents assured everyone that this was all very serious, and then even hired several hunters to search everything in the Kikapu River area and track down giant birds. True, they never found anything, and the local huntsman later even called Ruth a liar.
Since then, several more incidents have been recorded about the mysterious giant birds of Illinois and the Discovery Channel filmed a documentary about them.
And in 2012, researcher Lon Strickler was sent a letter from a man who claimed to have lived in the area in 1977 and saw two huge birds two days before they attacked Marlon Lowe. And then I saw them again a year later.