The mystery of the huge Rio Grande Bird

Stretching over 4,872 square miles, the Rio Grande River in southern Texas runs through the valley of the same name.

 This is one of the fastest growing regions of the United States, and there are also large expanses of untouched wildlife. There are several nature reserves and national parks, including the Laguna Atascosa Nature Reserve, the Santa Ana Nature Reserve and the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley Park, which attract many tourists and vacationers every year. And it is in these places since 1976 that a large flying creature has been regularly noticed, which is described as a very large bird, sometimes with a human-like body, assuring that the creature has a monkey face and at the same time a long beak, a bald head and blood-red eyes, which are sometimes described as glowing.

On January 1, 1976, 11-year-old Tracey Lawson was playing in the yard of her house near Harlingen, Texas, with her 14-year-old cousin Jackie Davis. At some point, the children noticed something very strange a hundred meters away near the irrigation canal. They did not approach him, but got binoculars and examined a "scary giant bird" in it, which was 5 feet tall (1.5 meters), and her face was like a gorilla, but completely bald and with burning red eyes. The strange beast looked towards the children for a while, and then reportedly let out a completely unearthly scream before disappearing from sight behind the trees. At first, the adults did not believe the children's words, but Jackie's stepfather found unusual three-toed footprints 8 inches in diameter (20 cm) near the canal the next day. It was also strange that the Lawson family dog, which is usually very friendly and active, began to act very unusually, hiding in his kennel and refusing to go outside.

The next sighting of the strange creature occurred a week later in San Benito, where in the early morning of January 7, two police officers Arturo Padilla and Homer Galvan saw what they described as a very large bird with a gorilla-like face, glowing red eyes and a huge wingspan of 12 - 15 meters. That is, almost word for word what the children saw. Later that day, another eyewitness named Alverico spotted the creature near his Brownsville home. He described it as a bat-like creature with large wings, large eyes and a long thin beak. Curiously, neither the children nor the police mentioned anything about the beak. So it was two different creatures? Or maybe it can change shapes? Alverico also said that the creature made eerie sounds similar to a moan and the sounds were completely foreign, as if this creature was from another planet.

In an interview with the Brownsville Herald newspaper, Alverico said that he was very scared and that "the creature had wings like a bird, but it was not a bird, but an animal not of this world." There were other observations. Brothers David and John Douthat were driving along a rural road in the Rio Grande Valley one day when a winged humanoid creature with a head resembling a wolf landed right in front of them, causing them to squeal and brake. When they tried to move away from the nightmarish creature, it jumped forward as if it was going to attack, but then only took off and flew over them with an audible whistling of wings.

The appearance of the strange Rio Grande bird echoes the appearance of the so-called "Batsquatch". There is only one main difference, the Batsquatch did not notice the beak. But as mentioned above, not all eyewitnesses mentioned the presence of a beak. However, the Batsquatch was often described as having a hairy ape-like body, and the bird from the Rio Grande did not have a single witness with such a detail.

On January 15, 1976, an eyewitness named Armando Grimaldo claimed that he was in the yard of his house in Raymondville (a city in south Texas) when he heard a popping sound and a strange whistle. When he looked up, he saw a huge bird that looked like a creature with a monkey face and a bare head. The creature flew at the man and tore his clothes with its claws. Armando's neighbors confirmed that the man first started screaming, and then ran to them in torn clothes and in a completely shocked state.

A couple of days after this incident, another man named Francisco reported that he was also attacked by a giant "bird man" in Eagle Pass (Maverick County, Texas), and doctors confirmed that he received deep scratches from an unidentified wild animal. All these cases eventually caused many local residents to feel panic and some even refused to leave their homes after dark for fear of being attacked by the beast. There were even claims that pets were disappearing and farmers in the region found mutilated cattle.

On January 18, there were two sightings of a strange creature, first he was seen by sisters from Brownsville, and then two soldiers near Poteet. Further observations of the mysterious huge bird began to come almost daily for several weeks from people of all ages and all walks of life, and stories about these creatures began to appear regularly in all local news. Another remarkable case of observation was on February 24, 1976, when three teachers saw a creature near the city of Harlingen (the same Texas), and this time the bird seemed to them a prehistoric flying reptile - a pterosaur, or rather a pterodactyl.

Indeed, in many reconstructions of the appearance of pterosaurs, they have a bald, leathery "face" with piercing eyes. Could this creature be described by people who know little about pterosaurs as a "bird with a gorilla face"? It may well be, especially in those years when there was not yet such a boom in dinosaurs. So there's an ancient pterodactyl flying somewhere over the Rio Grande? One of the eyewitnesses, according to him, saw a huge bird three times. He described that she had short legs, black eyes, a translucent beak, and wings with stripes. He even tried to describe why other people might not notice the bird's beak:

"Her beak is so translucent that if you look from a certain angle and catch a glimpse, you might not notice it. The bird itself is so huge that I have never seen such a thing. She is a dirty brown color, without long legs and does not stand on her feet like ordinary birds."

This description is also very similar to the description of a pterodactyl. The hysteria over the huge bird eventually reached the point where large sums were offered for its capture, alive or dead. As a result, many groups of profit hunters began to roam the Rio Grande Valley and shoot at any large birds. For which they were cursed by defenders of wildlife, who believe that an ogre bird can be a representative of a rare endangered species. During this time, there were several false alarms, such as a mass sighting of a "big bird" south of the Alamo, which was shot but later identified as a blue heron.

After that, many skeptics began to say that only this heron was actually observed by all people. Eventually, the flow of observations began to fade, but individual cases continued to appear in the 70s and 80s and beyond.

One rather frightening incident happened in 1977, when a woman in Santa Rosa saw a giant bird with black eyes and a face like an old woman. The creature flew straight at the woman and when she retreated home, the bird started scratching at the door until it was chased away by the neighbor's dogs. The bird did not appear here again, but the next day people found the mutilated bodies of these dogs, torn apart by a clearly very strong beast.

Since then, the huge mysterious Rio Grande bird has become a local legend like Nessie in Scotland. She continues to be seen from time to time even in our time, although there are still no photos or videos of her.