Almost all peoples of the world have legends about winged monsters, and the legends about them go back to the depths of time. Among the Slavs, these are the magical birds of Sirin and Alkonost, among the ancient Jews - winged angels and demons, among the ancient Greeks - harpies. Moreover, their descriptions among different peoples do not differ greatly. Does all this not indicate that people have seen such monsters with their own eyes?
"Shot down" legend
North American Indians have long talked about the gigantic, thundercloud-like Thunderbird. The fact that this is not a legend at all, very soon had to be convinced of the first white settlers who found shelter in the Great Lakes region. In the XVII-XIX centuries, a huge bird was seen many times, and in 1890 two cowboys even managed to shoot this monster.
The unprecedented prey was not easily delivered to the nearest town. The local newspaper devoted the entire front page to the find. The article stated that the wingspan of the giant bird is 15 meters, the body length is 10 meters, and the head from the back of the head to the tip of the beak is about 1.5 meters! In addition, the author of the article stated that the beak of a strange bird is more like a mouth, since it is seated with teeth, there is no plumage on the body, and the wings "consist of a translucent membrane that bullets pierced without much difficulty." The strange bird was burned at the insistence of a local religious organization, which declared it "a product of the underworld."
Attacks on sheep and people
In general, in the United States, monstrous flying creatures are seen almost more often than in the rest of the world. In the XX century, 1976 was especially rich in such observations, when a strange creature, similar to a pterodactyl, terrorized Texas farmers living in the Rio Grande Valley.
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Joe Sua-res, the rancher, ran into him first. On the morning of January 12, he discovered that someone had ripped his sheep to pieces. There were no tracks around the scene, and the police officers who appeared could not understand how the animals were killed. The only clue was of a completely absurd nature: on the night when the attack on the corral took place, Suarez woke up from a strange noise - flapping of wings over his very house. He was convinced that whoever made this noise was much larger than any of the local flying predators. The police assured Mr. Suarez that whatever flapped its wings at night, it would never return.
But it came back and avenged such disrespect for itself. On the late evening of January 14, a young Texan, Armando Grimaldo, was sitting in the backyard of his house, smoking a cigarette. Suddenly, something that he later called the "infernal creature" landed on him directly from the sky. A flying creature with a wingspan of 3 meters, with glowing red eyes, black-brown skin and a beak seated with teeth, grabbed at Grimaldo with its talons and tried to lift him into the air. On the heartbreaking screams of the young man, people ran out of the house and caught the moment when the creature, abandoning its prey, flew away into the night darkness. The wounded young man in shock was taken to a local hospital.
Like many people who have met the inexplicable. Armando Grimaldo and his family became the object of ridicule from most Texans, who simply could not believe the whole story. But the strange happenings continued.
Monsters from the encyclopedia
On January 31 of the same year, something huge crashed into the trailer of a certain Alverico Guaardo. When Mr. Guayarde climbed out of the cockpit to investigate what had happened, he encountered what he later described as "something from another planet." The dark creature without feathers, like a giant bat, danced menacingly on the ground and moved towards him, making terrible croaking throat sounds. Guayarde rushed back into the car and through the window saw the creature rise into the air and disappear into the darkness.
A month later, on February 24, a giant reptile with a wingspan of about 6 meters, slowly hovering in the sky, was seen by three school teachers on their way to work in San Antonio. Subsequently, one of them, Patricia Bryant, said that the wings of this creature were covered with skin, and that it rather used them as planes for soaring. Studying the images of dinosaurs in the encyclopedia, the teachers identified the monster as a pterodon - a creature belonging to the species of flying dinosaurs, which, according to paleontologists, became extinct 150 million years ago.
In addition to the three school ladies, many Texas residents, mostly motorists, observed the strange flying creature that day. Soon, however, the creatures stopped appearing. Only six years later, on September 14, 1982, one of them was seen by ambulance driver James Thompson over the highway near the Mexican border. Describing to reporters a local newspaper what he encountered, Thompson said that the animal's skin resembled a grayish rough material and was completely devoid of feathers. In his story, the eyewitness definitely attributed the creature he saw to pterodactyls.
Ambush on the "messenger of death"
Reports of mysterious winged monsters come, as a rule, from sparsely populated and wild areas of the planet. In the 1970s, the American naturalist Ivan Sanderson happened to see such a creature in Cameroon.
The expedition, led by Sanderson, camped in the desolate mountains of Assumbo on the banks of a small river. The scientist writes: "Someone shouted to me:" Beware! " I raised my head and saw: a black creature with a wingspan twice that of an eagle was flying right at me above the water itself. In the twilight, I did not see him properly, but I well remembered the open mouth and a semicircle of sharp white teeth. I threw myself into the water, and when I surfaced, the animal had already disappeared."
Sanderson and his men, startled by the appearance of the strange creature, began to watch over him. And it reappeared over the camp. A winged monster, similar to a pterodactyl, swooped in so fast that no one had time to fire. Snapping his teeth, he hit one of the expedition members with his body and knocked him down. Then the "pterodactyl" made several low circles over the defeated man and, gliding above the ground itself, disappeared into the swamp thickets.
When the zoologist told the guides about the monster, they were horrified. It turned out that among the local tribes the mysterious guest is known as a "messenger of death." According to the legend prevailing in those parts, a person who sees this winged, toothy creature will soon die.
Case in Siberia
Flying monsters, apparently, are found in our country. Here is what Vladimir Arsenyev, a well-known researcher of Transbaikalia and the Ussuri region, wrote in his documentary book Dersu Uzala at the beginning of the 20th century:
“Something happened that I did not expect at all. I heard the flapping of wings … A mass, huge and dark, floated out of the fog and flew over the river. Screams were heard, similar to the screams of a woman … In the evening, the Udege began to lively discuss the incident and talk about the fact that "a man who can fly through the air" lives in these places …"
Flying absurdity
So who did the eyewitnesses see? An unknown bird? But birds, as everyone knows, do not have teeth. Maybe it was a giant bat? Experienced naturalists Sanderson and Arsenyev would certainly have identified her. Was it really a prehistoric flying lizard, preserved in the uninhabited regions of America, equatorial Africa and the South Siberian taiga?
Here it must be borne in mind that if such creatures really live somewhere in the secluded corners of the planet, then for their survival as a species in the population there should be no less than a certain number of individuals, at least fifty or one hundred. And this means that they should appear not from time to time, with interruptions in years and decades, but much more often. Yes, and the nesting sites of such large creatures would certainly become known over time, especially in Texas, which is not at all such a wilderness.
In general, the theory that pterodactyls have survived to our time seems so ridiculous that scientists reject it, as they say, "from the doorway." However, there are so many reports about these creatures and eyewitness testimonies are so convincing that some researchers seriously believe that some creatures unknown to science really appear in our sky, but these are not pterodactyls, but aliens from parallel worlds. Moreover, the descriptions of "pterodactyls", if you look carefully at each episode, differ, and sometimes quite significantly. This applies not only to the size of the creatures, but also to their appearance. In some cases, witnesses describe them as "winged humanoid creatures", in others - as birds with a "human head".
Without a doubt, the mystery of the flying monsters is one that skeptics can brush aside with peace of mind. And until at least one of these "birds" is shot or is not alive in the enclosure, we are sure that everything will remain so.
Igor Voloznev. Magazine "Secrets of the XX century" No. 10 2010