![]() ![]() ![]() He bills himself as the Jane Goodall of skunk apes. He’s written a field guide, made TV appearances, continually investigated reported sightings and established a Skunk Ape Research Headquarters on his property, where tourists can learn all about the legendary creature. In the decades since, he’s relentlessly pursued skunk apes and seen them, he says, on three other occasions. “I finally saw this damn thing, and it got away, just like that.”īut the fleeting moment left an indelible impression on young Shealy, who’s now 50 years old. The ape hurried away, into the cypress hummocks scattered amongst the marsh. He and his brother stared at the creature, mouths agape, but almost at the same time, as he tells it, the skies opened and rain poured down. It looked like a man, but completely covered with hair.” We were just kids, but we’d heard about it, and knew for sure what we were looking at. “My brother picked me up, and I saw it, about 100 yards away. But I couldn’t see it over the grass-I wasn’t tall enough,” Shealy says. ![]() “It was walking across the swamp, and my brother spotted it first. Dave was out deer hunting with his older brother, Jack, in the swamp behind his house, in what’s now Big Cypress National Preserve, when he encountered the ape incarnate. It was 1974, a few years after his father had come upon a set of footprints left by the creature-an Everglades version of Bigfoot named for its supposedly pungent odor. The first time Dave Shealy saw a skunk ape, he says, he was ten years old. ![]()
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