90 SARASOTA SCENE | MAY 2018
insider
Seriously, what more do a pair of amateur monster
hunters need?
It’s quite sensible at this point to wonder: “What type of
research does a writer do before going on an adventure
such as this that he plans to write about?” Amateur
writers might commit to days of research about the
cryptid in question and perhaps reach out to an expert,
such as Dave Shealy, who first saw a skunk ape in 1974
while deer hunting in the swamp behind his house
in what’s now Big Cypress National Preserve. “Why
is Shealy considered to be the Jane Goodall of skunk
apes?” you might quite reasonably ask. It’s because he
said so in an interview on a Bigfoot website about five
years ago. “I am the expert,” he explained, “the state
and county expert on the Florida skunk ape and have
been for years.” Case closed.
But this over-the-top commitment to research and
planning wasn’t the route I took. Not me. I was content
to let my own firsthand facts about the skunk ape tell
me all I needed to know.
To that end, I showed up at “Roger’s” house with a box
of Slim Jims, a Tampa Bay Rays cap, and a broken yo-yo
I found under the seat of my car. “Game time,” “Bobby”
said, grinning from ear to ear.
It was somewhere around this point that “Luke” and I
both realized that we had no idea where to look for the
skunk ape. So we went to Denny’s.
I’m pleased to report that there were no skunk apes at
Denny’s (threat averted!), though a beefy Fed-Ex guy
kept giving us the eye as we photo-documented all the
subjects in our field of vision. “Just in case,” “Zeke”
kept saying. He’s cautious that way.
The non-cryptid highlight of the Denny’s trip was
that the waitress overcharged me for the reduced fat
chocolate milk. Blargh!
And honestly, as “Will” and I stood in the parking
lot in front of his 1977 AMC Gremlin, we confessed
that we weren’t all that interested in chasing strange
figures through the cypress hummocks in the marsh.
That seemed like a lot of work, even for us enterprising
potential eyewitnesses. And if Denny’s was skunk-apefree,
then what type of danger were we really in after
all?
Plus I was out of Slim Jims.
That’s the exact moment that the skunk came after us.
Like it was right out of a Wes Craven horror flick, this
6.5 lb. monster zeroed in and attacked. As the thing
waddled up to the rust-bottomed door of “Paul’s”
puke-green Gremlin and opened fire, unloading its
awful scent glands right at us, I couldn’t help but
wonder—was this the skunk ape’s revenge? Would
we be plagued by odiferous creatures of the forest
forevermore like some kind of mythological stink curse
for having the hubris to go after a legendary figure like
the infamous skunk ape?
Note to self: Use more smart-sounding words like
“odiferous” and “hubris.”
As we lathered the Gremlin down at the nearest sudsand
wash place, we realized the stink had magically
disappeared. That’s when “Clark,” the fool, suggested
that maybe it’d been a stray cat versus a skunk.
This is exactly why I don’t hang out with “Pete” very
often. He’s plum crazy.
Note to self: Stop hanging out with “Clarence.” Unless
he’s buying the chocolate milk. Or bringing Slim Jims.
Want to chase down the mystery of the giant octopus of
St. Augustine? Got a hankering to find out if love bugs
were really invented in an Orlando lab as a means to
stem the mosquito population? Think you’ve got the
nobody-knows-but-me 411 on the plague of butt spiders
(look it up!) in central Florida? Send all of these beauties
to ryan@scenesarasota.com ASAP!
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