If you read the story below, you will see a picture a deer that appears to have taken flight and landed on a power line — causing a major outage. Montana officials believe that an eagle was able to snatch the small deer but dropped it when it proved too much of a load.
The power company listed the outage as “deer with wings.”
The company was not the first electrical experts to identify the phenomenon of flying horses, deer, and houses . . .
Source: Seattle
PI
BIL: “As to the fossil records, who is to say that the Illni didn’t have some Miocene or Pleistocene varmint terrorizing them? …. The very existence of the modern Coelaanth tells me…”
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Point taken. It’s all about supply and demand, and luck. A very small population of very large predators in a near-eden of forest and field could hold out, dying as a species, for a very long time. Or flourishing like the ‘gators. It’s all about the pressure from competition and available food supply. If the Piasa Bird as carved was a representative image it wouldn’t have had much competition except for bears.
Whatever it was it was a creature they thought a lot about and memorialized on the side of a cliff. Memorialized not just with paint but by inscribing a half inch deep outline of its features of into the rock. It was a pretty large undertaking for folks on ladders, done ghod only knows when so I have to assume they gave it a lot of respect.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateg123/4004200693/
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“I’m not only interested in paleontology, but cryptozoology.”
It’s all cryptozoology until somebody finds ‘them’ and classifies ‘them’. So am I.
LK,
My cats very much care that birds are dinosaurs.
Tasty, tasty, dinosaurs.
As to the fossil records, who is to say that the Illni didn’t have some Miocene or Pleistocene varmint terrorizing them? Look at the Coelacanth. Everyone thought they were extinct and relegated to the fossil record until some dude caught one off of Madagascar in the late ’30s. I’m not only interested in paleontology, but cryptozoology. The very existence of the modern Coelaanth tells me that a certain number of these “mystery creatures” cryptozoology searches for may not be new undiscovered species at all, but rather hold out pocket populations of otherwise extinct species.
BIL, you know how you can tell if someone is an extraterrestrial? They don’t love dinosaurs.
Seriema, oh yea’ that’s a dinosaur. Absolutely. Your “Terror Birds”, Phorusrhacidae, were indeed amazing creatures. My livingroom is, at it’s longest wall, 24′ long. When I read a description of something that has a measurement I just measure it by looking at my long wall. It’s always a bit of a thrill to read about a critter and have to add length or multiply the length of my long wall, continuing it to the big tree in the front yard (50″ total) and on toward the street. A 30′ tall flightless bird is …. thriling! 🙂
The first time I read “The Hot Blooded Dinosaurs” as I got toward the end of it I just had to literally jump out of my chair and declare, joyfully, to the better half and the cats “Birds! The birds are dinosaurs!” The cats didn’t care but the better half read the book. LOL, how could you of all people not just love dinosaurs? You pass the test.
The thing I have always liked about the Piasa Bird is that it is very un-bird like. It is reminiscent of a chimera. It looked more like a Griffin or dragon than a bird. It’s an old legend, first set down in 1600-something by a missionary. But the Ilini were a group of tribes that lived in the Illinois river valley. The culture of the Ilini and the cultures that gave rise to their culture stretches how far back one can only imagine.
There are fossils of creatures that might give rise to a Piasa Bird but they come from prehistory. Thing is, fossils take a specific set of circumstances to form. If those circumstances don’t exist a species can arise, flourish and die out leaving no trace. I’m one of those people that think that the great bulk of the life on earth did just that. Out there the mists of time are populated with the ghost’s of countless magical and terrible creatures that had their brief time and faded leaving nothing behind. Numbers of them beyond counting.
I’m a romantic about the Piasa Bird, I like to think we had the last ‘dragon’ living here in the Mid-west and the first of the First Americans saw it, perhaps eventually crafting it’s oral history, its legend, to fit their own political ends but describing it as accurately as oral history allows.
This is a slightly different version of the legend in a more interesting historical context:
http://www.indians.org/welker/piasa.htm
pete,
I saw a couple of those “Walking With” shows and really enjoyed them.
Gyres, “Give it time”. I worry about that. The book “The Hot Zone” made quite an impression on me and I avidly read about the new viral and bacteriological monsters coming for us. yea’ give it time.
Anon nurse, thank you muchly, I likewise always enjoy you postings. I’m not a professional anything anymore and had to leave the wider world due to family obligations so I end up posting a lot of ad hominem type, off-the-wall things. Everyone here unlike some places I have visited, has been very welcoming to me in that regard. Lateral thinking and tangential contributions are not the sin here they are some places. I enjoy some of the off-the-wall tangents posters here initiate more than if they had stuck to the thread title.
buddha
the “walking with dinosaurs” and “walking with prehistoric beasts” were great shows.
i’ve found some on you tube a series where they guess what may evolve in 5, 20 and 200 million years. the graphics aren’t quite as good as the walking with series but they’re still interesting.
LK,
Many kids have a thing for dinosaurs and I was no exception. What was unusual though was that one of my favorite types of dinosaurs technically weren’t dinosaurs at all. They were birds. “Terror birds” from the family Phorusrhacidae to be precise. They couldn’t fly, but they were still the apex predators of Miocene South America because the largest of them was almost ten feet tall, could run 30 mph, and had enormous beaked heads that could be used both like a club and as shears to cut and rip meat. Their only living relative today is the much smaller and much less ferocious (unless you’re a bug or a frog) Seriema.
Lotta,
“I’m amazed the human race wasn’t eaten before it got enough of a foothold to flourish.”
Give it time.
“…I’m amazed the human race wasn’t eaten before it got enough of a foothold to flourish.”
-lottakatz
So am I… (I so enjoy your postings.)
I like big birds. The stories of monster birds always amaze me. If you came face to face with a big cat or reptile you would of course think, ‘yea, I’m not the top f the food chain’. But birds? Here in my area we have the legend of the Piasa (Pie-a-saw) Bird, given its name by the Illini Indians. People say it’s just a legend but I think it would not at all be out of the realm of possibility to have had a bird or birds in North America large enough to make humans their prey. That may have also been the case in New Zealand.
Legend of the Piasa bird:
“Many moons ago, there existed a birdlike creature of such great size, he could easily carry off a full grown deer in his talons. His taste, however, was for human flesh. Hundreds of warriors attempted to destroy the Piasa, but failed. Whole villages were destroyed and fear spread throughout the Illini tribe. Ouatoga, a chief whose fame extended even beyond the Great Lakes, separated himself from his tribe, fasted in solitude for the space of a whole moon, and prayed to the Great Spirit to protect his people from the Piasa.
On the last night of his fast, the Great Spirit appeared to Ouatoga in a dream and directed him to select 20 warriors, arm them each with a bow and poisoned arrow, and conceal them in a designated spot. Another warrior was to stand in an open view, as a victim for the Piasa.
When the chief awoke in the morning, he told the tribe of his dream. The warriors were quickly selected and placed in ambush. Ouatoga offered himself as the victim. Placing himself in open view, he soon saw the Piasa perched on the bluff eyeing his prey. Ouatoga began to chant the death song of a warrior. The Piasa took to the air and swooped down upon the chief. The Piasa had just reached his victim when every bow was sprung and every arrow sent sailing into the body of the beast. The Piasa uttered a fearful scream that echoed down the river, and died. Ouatoga was safe, and the tribe saved. ”
http://www.altonweb.com/history/piasabird/
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7000 years ago on the island now known as New Zealand the largest true raptor lived, the Haast Eagle. I heard about it while watching a show about mega-fauna. It killed Moa birds which weigh in excess of 400 lbs. It killed like a Peregrine Falcon; it swooped down and broke the Moas back or neck. The Hasst Eagle was a heavy bird with about a 9/10′ wingspan. When humans colonized New Zealand they killed the Moa’s and the eagles died off because its primary food source was gone. It probably preyed on humans too if it could catch them out of the dense forest: possibly unarmed women and children was the speculation stated in the documentary. That was kind of sexist IMO; if you were living with birds big enough to carry you off I’d think everyone would have at least a pointed stick, a spear of sorts. Still, it’s pretty impressive to think about a bird large enough to make you its prey even if you factor in the fact that humans were smaller then than now.
There’s a bird legend in India about a bird large enough to carry off an elephant. I think that’s stretching it a bit. But considering the fossils of monsters that have been found, fossils of monsters that haven’t as yet been found, oral histories going back hundreds of years {and in some cultures like India, millennia} about monsters that could and did consider us food, I’m amazed the human race wasn’t eaten before it got enough of a foothold to flourish. And that’s not even factoring in the ancient Aliens. 😉
the deers last words “those hunters will never find me up here”
I’m afraid he was just too high strung…
But had it been a raindeer….
It sounds like the eagle had a power outage.
Oh, I thought it was West Coast – but then I suppose the “liberal elites” on either coast can be blamed, not like the sheep molesters of heartland virtues
Frank,
And those 10 per cent live on the east coast….
Its our alien overlords. They swept down from the heavens & grabbed a few specimens to anally prob. Occasionally one gets loose & falls from the saucer as it takes off. You often see them after they have landed with a thud next to the highway. Of course, they don’t want you to know we are being visited so they blame it on cars. HA! as if a deer wouldn’t see the car coming and get out of the way!
BTW – My contacts on Titan tell me they are disappointed with the research here. After decades of anal probes all they have learned is that 10% of the population appear to enjoy them.