You're listening to the Paranormal UK Radio Network, the best in paranormal talk radio
in the UK and around the world. Hello world, you're listening to Eleanor
Wagner's Strange and Scary world here on the Paranormal UK Radio Network, where we're
always creeping it real. I'm your host, Eleanor Wagner. Welcome all to
my paranormal Closet where the stories in magic take place. Several episodes ago,
I interviewed Brad Bertelli from the Florida Keys about his book on the notorious Skunk
Ape of the Keys. For the listener. Here's the Skunk Ape is Florida's
version of Bigfoot. My guest today was referred to me by Brad. He's
extremely knowledgeable about the skunk Ape phenomena. He's the Jane Goodall of the Florida
Ever Plays and has spent his entire life studying the cryptid skunk Ape and has
established the official Skunk Ape research headquarters in Osha, Florida. Joined me and
welcome in. Yeah, welcome, Thank you for joining me. Dave Shelley,
Yeah, it's good to be here with you. Glad we could get
together, So tell me how did you get involved with the skull gate phenomenon?
When was your first sighting? Well, when I was ten years old,
just about a half a mile from where I'm sitting right now. I'm
on a Lana. I have a home here in the Everyglades, looking out
back into what's called the Big Cypress National Preserve, and this is the property
I grew up on in My brother and I are about a half a mile
back there in the swamp, and my brother saw something coming and he's like,
here's a skull gate and we'd heard about him as kids. I couldn't
see it. He had to pick me up where I could see out over
the grass, and out about a hundred yards away was this hairy animal like
a man ape is. I really don't know how to describe it, six
and a half feet tall, looked like a man covered with hair. But
we'd heard about this growing up as kids, and so that's kind of how
it all got started. I'm still trying to get over your introduction where you've
compared me to Jane Goodall. That's how you are actually referred to on the
Internet. So she's extremely powerful in what she does, and you seem to
be very popular and what you do as well popular. But the popularity just
comes from my dedication to the research. I've always put that first before myself,
and so the skun cape is quite popular and I did help push that
along it and I don't know, it's I'm kind of flattered because for many
years I didn't get a lot of respect from other researchers, government personnel,
even National Park Service was reluctant to think that what I was doing was any
type of real research. And then, of course, I think, you
know in two thousand when I took the video that kind of put the myth
to rest and shows the reality of what we have here. Please tell us
about that video. I briefly read about it, but I don't know the
extent of what happened. I have and you called me, well I did.
I trusted Brad for Kelly to tell me that I had to talk to
you, so well, No, the video is really the big thing.
But and you know, I'm blowing up the video saying this video is huge.
But in nineteen ninety seven I took twenty seven photographs in the same area
and that was worldwide attention. That was huge. Unsolved mysteries did a whole
episode of it. It was quite fascinating. They bring the State archaeologists.
They did DNA testing, but this is like, I don't know about you.
You look pretty young, but I'm fifty eight years old, so oh,
thank you. That's really nice. We're exactly the same age. Yeah.
I kind of had a feeling. I don't know why, but they
came here unsolved mysteries. It was huge. They did DNA testing, they
couldn't come up with any results on that, but the photographs themselves off put
that into motion. We're just so compelling. The video was taken in two
thousand. Now you can go on I'm gonna tell you what. You go
to permission and you can put a link on your site, right m Yeah,
okay, well the video is available on the Smithsonian YouTube. You'll see
the full video. You're welcome to take a clip of that and post it
to your podcast as your property. That's my footage, so you're welcome to
use that. Thank you. Yes, anyway, I'm giving you permission right
now. Yeah. People think I took the pictures to make money. I
don't you know. That was not my purpose. My purpose was to prove
that we have something here. Unusual. We have as many as seven to
nine skunk apes that live here in Everglades National Park, in the Big Cypress
National Preserve. And I guess when I first started going public with us bringing
awareness to it, there was a lot of feedback from Big Foot Organization as
out in the Pacific Northwest, like, well, there's nothing to eat in
the Everglades, which we all know that's not true. The Everglades is a
virtual salad bars, mortgage board of food if you're knowledgeable, if there's a
lot of food here. The second thing was, is Flarida so small,
it's not big enough to have what we have or get anything even similar.
But actually, the Everglades and in adjoining state and state owned and managed lands
three million acres, this is the largest wild protected area east of the Mississippi
River. It's huge here, and a lot of times I'll meet people who
are like and I've lived here. My family's been here since eighteen hundred and
ninety all forms of transportation, We've been a lot of places. But when
somebody tells me they've been everywhere and they know every inch of the Everglades,
I don't laugh in their face, but you know, I just kind of
hold my breath and a chuckle inside, because nobody knows every inch of the
Everglade. It's huge. Well, where do you think these skunk cape came
from? You know, that's a really good question, you think, Well,
Dave, you did ask that question all the time because you're the skunk
cape guy, and that's just a common No, it's not really a common
question. Where I think they come from. Well, honestly, climate change
is a big issue now. A lot of people claim the water's rising and
it's getting hotter, you know, and always that the news is pumping up
the weather. But we've undergone climate change. Climate change is real. It's
a natural occurring thing, and you can see it in the layers of the
earth here in the Everglades, and you can see it in the prehistoric remains
we have here. There were actually two ice ages, and what happened to
the second the second ice age, it pushed I believe it's a second one
was a little stronger than the other. But that's what pushed all the humans
here to Florida. We had saber cats, we had mastodons, we had
what's called the mammoth hunter. You know, you hear about all these fancy
Indian names like the Seminole and the Mikasuke, and they're they're much more recent.
But when you hear these people who lived here, they weren't even a
named tribe. They didn't even have a real name, not even in not
even in archaeology. Archaeologists call them mammoth hunters. That's that's and and so
we've had this human civilization down here. This is a not only was a
good hiding place for the Seminole Indians, drug runners and stuff like that,
this part of Florida was a good hiding place for species during these ice age
waves that passed across the earth in the past. So all kinds of species
can can live here. We have a lot of exotic species that have been
introduced. You know, there's so much to talk about, so much to
talk about, the pythons and everything. So it's not highly unlikely that this
could be something that actually evolved through, you know, the evolition of human
distory right here with us, but in very small numbers, very reclusive.
For whatever reason, maybe they say that the the ones with the brow overseas
Neanderthals. They say Neanderthals were really big and strong, but they were really
dumb. I mean, they were just they weren't as bright as that people
that lived there, and they were killed. People killed them. They were
freaks and they didn't want to deal with that kind of competition, and they
were easily killed off. You know. So you know, there's a good
reason to believe that we do have something. It does maybe possibly have some
human characteristics and common sense and has been able to hide here in the effort
glates, this huge vast area that's just not yet to be discovered. That's
not an impossibility. The new creatures are discovered all the time. It was
only one hundred years ago that they found the mountain grill. It's probably one
hundred and thirty by now, one hundred years. When I was a kid,
I get hold so fast, and older I get the faster it goes.
So where did they come from? Who knows? I could say God,
I could say from another planet. I mean, there's people that believe
that UFOs and big foots or have things in common. Some people say they
can quote they're actually smarter than we are, that they're advanced species. Yeah,
I've heard that too, also heard of them being possibly interdimensional. Even
so, your first question was a really big question. I don't know if
I gave you the right answer, but okay, let's move it. You
did you made you made sense absolutely? How did it get its name?
How did the skunk gave get its name? From the smell? That's it's
really liking it to a skunk? Really, I kind of do, I
kind of do. Some people say ro eggs or moldy cheese, or goat
dung or wet dog, different descriptions of it, but to me, it's
it's Scott. I'll tell you what's kind of neat is my son bought some
skunks and it's really good, really smell stistics and oh it smells so bad
you can't you can't believe it. Just I'll have it in a metal can,
a closed steel mel can, sitting behind my house. And every time
I walk around the corner, I get a whiff of that Scott, and
you know, it just kind of takes me back. You know, I'm
looking around, but I remember, oh, it's that can there, you
know. So the stunk is and and that does and people think, well,
that's unique. It's definitely catchy stunk. You can see my logos.
Yes, that's our that's our official logo, Gere at the headquarters. But
it's not unusual for reports big Foot to be accompanied by a strong odor.
Probably you you yours, And my memory is the abominable snowmen. And I
always saw abominable. Oh that's big, that's strong. Oh abombina, that's
something that's indefensible. No, it's but it stinks abominable snowmen. So the
skunk ape is kind of carries the same name, it's just different, you
know, different language. Well, I know you said you saw it the
first time when you were ten, and I'm sure you've seen it many times
since. Correct, only four times. But I really feel like I've been
blessed because people who live out here, their whole lives around me. They
may have caught a glimpse of it once in the distance, or you know,
maybe their grandpa saw it. But for me to have four sightings and
two of them were just phenomenal, that's incredible. I just really think I've
been blessed. They probably don't spend as much time looking for it as you
have. I mean, you've made this kind of like your life mission,
so you're out there constantly looking and researching. So it's probable that you would
see it more than others. I sent down about a year ago, because
I'm not braggadocious by any means, but I have they're believing it or not.
There's still a few critics out there, are people that just aren't quite
convinced. Oh, what were we talking about. I forget. We were
talking about the many sightings you have seen before that you've seen others. Yeah,
the best sighting that I've had, though, for me, was a
personal sighting. I was on the food source and there's two big highways that
cross the state of Florida. Highway forty one runs lower and I seventy five.
It runs across a little higher. Forty one is more of a sceny
brown. That's where we're located at, right on the border of Everglades National
Park, right on Highway forty one, near the town of Everglades City.
We have the smallest post office is right right here. It's the only thing
in town, but it's here. But so I went to seventy five,
which is north but still protected land. I hunted. It was in September.
The salt palmetto berries were just ripening, and then sal palmetto berries are
really abundant, and they're a major food source for the wildlife here in the
Everglade. There's been some issues where a lot of these areas where their berries
are really dense migrant eally. I don't want to say you know everything correct.
I want to say migrant ealy. Farm workers have been known to come
up out here in the Everglades in trucks and they jump off with sacks,
empty sacks, and they go into the forest and they collect these berries because
they use them in for medicinal purposes. Companies buy them. They pay a
great deal of money for him, so like a bag of berries could be
worth four hundred bucks. So the park is fighting that at all the time,
and during the month of September. In order to find berries on a
regular consistent basis, you have to go to areas that people don't go to.
So I was north of where I'm at now, north of seventy five.
There was about three square miles of these palmettos growing and had not been
disturbed. I had to wind in my face. It was beautiful. I
started easing up into the palmettos. As I got into the palmettos, I
could see that there had been some activities. Some of the berries were stripped
off the stocks. There was some They're small, palmettos are not real tall,
like two or three feet tall, so some of them were kind of
smashed. And right away I'm thinking skunk cake, because this is obviously my
hunt, this is what I wanted to hunt. But then in the back
of my head, I got to remember, got big wild hogs here,
we got black bears here. But I was convinced, and I was looking,
and then I started smelling that skunky smell, and I thought, holy
cow. I took about three more steps into the wind through these palmettos,
and they're kind of loud. There's no way to go through them without making
noise. So I was making a little noise and we could talk a lot
about that. I'm a very good hunter, and I can walk without making
noise, but you have to go so slowly. It's very time in them.
So I was moving forward in these palmettos, and that's when I noticed
they were wiggling in front of me. Of course, at that point,
i'm thinking, I'm not sure. I'm smelling the smell and it stood up
and I'm looking and there's a figure, oh about six and a half feet
tall, stands up. It kind of goes this way like it's kind of
looking to see me. But it didn't have like a Roman nose like a
bear would have, didn't have that canine snout, It didn't have the ears
barriers. You don't really when you see bears a lot, you really think
about their ears because their ears really aren't that big, but their ears really
stand out, you know. So when you see a bear, you see
it's ears, and it was absent of those. And I'm looking at it,
and this is all happening so fast, and I'm so excited. And
that's when I see the bushes moving in two other areas and something going towards
it. I can't really see what it is, but I had actually come
across a family unit that was feeding in those palmettos. Well, it all
happened so quick. I had a camera. I couldn't get all of that
going. So it was a real personal experience for me, but it was
probably the most fulfilling experiences that I've had as a researcher. No, nope,
no, I don't see how they could. I mean, they may
know my sin. I set for six months. In nineteen ninety seven,
I spent six months sitting out in the marsh in a tripod on tower for
six months before I got any photographs. So do they know me? They
got sense of smell, they got sense of direction, They know that whatever
was there lives here. But dot gear would know that. You know,
you're don't give animals enough credit. Animals. Animals know what's going on that's
not to survive. And if they don't see it coming, another animal,
telement's coming. Yeah, they perfect each other and use each other. And
yeah, they used the conditions of the land and the wind and the water,
which is also important here in the airways. We are clearly controlled by
water. If you're a mammal here in the Everglades, dirt is a commodity,
dry dirt, and that's just worth a couple of months out of the
year. So things have to be adaptable. They have to be able to
handle these heat and stuff. And I don't know of any animals out here
Dina heat and austin, but a skun cave probably would have a hard time.
So and the tracks are different. So I think there's been a lot
of evolution that has occurred in the break here in Florida, that these possibly
are like an offshoot of the big Foot that people see around the country.
Everybody adapts to their cloyment. I feel, so they have a deformity of
having just four toes. They only have four toes, none of them have
five toes, and that that's characteristic of the skull Cave. Another characteristic of
the skun Cave that's not so much like compared to a big Foot is that
they climb trees. They and trees. They build like like an eagle's nest,
but you know, like a cross of limbs. And you found some
of these Oh yes, yes, the parks are it's brought in. Oh
they got they partnered with an orangutangs facilility in Indonesia and they brought the researchers
here for a couple of months to the effort lates to check on some of
my claims that these unusual nests that I'm finding here in the swamp, and
they were going at it like it was orangutangs, but I think they figured
out different because orangutangs make a new bed every night. These beds were being
used over and over again, and they were large, and I don't know.
They always want to take credit for everything, always taking credit for stuff
that I've done. They are I mean that's on a personal level. I
grew up in the park. All these people running this park and all I've
had to deal with them all my life, and I've made changes everywhere.
I've made big changes out here. People don't even know the changes that I've
made to keep this place open a wild here. It's been a lifetime battlem
how long think you wouldn't think you'd have to fight the Park Service. I
mean you think they'd be on your team. But it's crazy today. Don't
believe anything here. Let's I'm telling you. Okay, I'll remember that when
was your research facility established exactly? But the property here was purchased by my
dad in nineteen sixty one, which predates the preserve. We were settlers here
by the time they started to create this, say, the government bought all
of our neighbors out, But we have been here long enough. We had
a history dating back to eighteen hundred and ninety, but this particular property with
nineteen sixty one, so we were exempted from being acquired by the park.
So I'm actually right in the middle of the National Park. Oh wow,
that's interesting. And on the boarder of the National Park and the preserve is
cypress trees and pine wars and prairies and ok camics and marshes, and it's
all the things that mammals and wildlife need to survive where the Everglades National Park
has some of that, but that's mainly the mangrove estuaries and stuff like that
that are so important to the ecosystem and the waters and the Gulf. I
don't know how long we got to talk and what we're going to get to
talk about. We definitely need to I'm gonna ask a question. We definitely
need to talk about Brad Ronelli, and we need to talk about his book.
He's the one that starting all of this. We did. I was
scouting the Internet looking for strange and scary phenomena for my show and came across
his book and that's what had me reach out to him to ask him for
an interview. So he came on my show for an interview. So we
talked about his stories being false but based on true facts. You mean they're
not true, No, they're not, but he did say that they were
based on true stories people have shared, and he does have that written in
his synopsis of the book, So it's not like he's trying to pull the
wool or anybody's eyes. They would know that the back underneath the barcode.
No, he's very, very honestly says in his synopsis and his description.
But some people don't like to read that and understand that. But a lot
of stuff on TV even now is based on true events. So he's not
doing anything wrong, and he's actually bringing attention to the existence of this cryptid.
And I feel that that in itself is important. I think it's important
that people realize that Bigfoot, Bobino, Snowman, skunk, Gape, they
exist, and we have similar cryptids all around the country and all around the
world. And you can take it for what it's worth or not believe it
whatever, who cares. But at least we're talking about it and bring awareness
to it. So yeah, yeah, as long as we're talking about it,
that's a good thing. So and that's how I feel about Brad's book.
I met Brad, I knew that, like one of the stories in
the book had a little bit of way to it, that there was some
truth into that story for sure in the beginning, and then he goes down
through the islands, and Brad is really good at what he does, and
Brad is a historian, And each of the stories don't just talk about the
Skunk Cave. They talk about the history of the Keys exactly. It's a
true and accurate depiction of the Keys and its history, and I think it's
important that people know that. As much is about the Skunk Cave, I
totally aggreciate it will mix exactly. However, well, see that's one of
the things that he and I had in common. You'll give me that.
However, let me just get this point. Of course, he and I
have that in common about the history stuff because I write books about true account
hauntings in the counties surrounding my own home, true account ghost hauntings, and
I like to write about the history of the towns and the history of the
location to give people that knowledge of what these spirits are about and who they
may be from the history standpoint. So when he told me that he loves
to share the history of the Keys, I was I was that was it.
I was in there. I was right in there to have an interview
with him, because I felt like that was really important too. But what's
that? However? What was that? However? You were getting to And
Brad's got a lot of fans, but there's a lot of competition in his
field. Everybody's a historian, and so he's got people that aren't real fond
of him. But and I they're all my friends. And I always defend
Brad because he's doing a good thing and he's the only person that has sets
aside so much time to put together these stories of history and share it with
people. And the keys people who live down there learn from the stuff that
Brad rights. This is healthy stuff, this is good stuff. So Brad
is my friend. I carry his book. Now the point, okay,
now, at point it comes to these professional researchers or you know, they
come down here. They don't know Brad, they don't know me. They
don't care about the keys. They just want to know about the skunky And
some of them will buy Brad's book. One particular and they were making a
movie and spend it told me about yeah, and I'm the one that blew
the whistle and said, listen, guys, that's not a true story.
And they were like, yeah, but whatever, They probably really didn't even
care about the fact that it may not have been true, because they're all
about entertainment and bring it. Even the paranormal world in the media nowadays is
so far off of what it is in reality, and it's all because of
entertainment purposes. They're there to entertain you, so they're going to do what
they have to preach the wire. You're preaching to the choir. Okay,
say for twenty five years, I get crazy offers. I'm offered fifty million
right now by movie creators in California from my life story and I have I'm
involved all the time in the reality shows that you're seeing on television now.
So you're I just want to tell you're right on the money. Thank you,
well, thank you, thank you for television. Yeah, that's right.
Well, tell me exactly what is it that you do at your research
center and is it is it like a museum that people could come and well,
we got a lot of hope. There's a lot of hope going on
at the headquarters. I guess the biggest hope is that we're busy. I
mean it's the middle of this low season right now. My parking lights packed
every day in the middle of sweet season. Other businesses around town that you
know, they've got the bills so they don't have that many customers. I'm
busy, so I used it as a lifeline to keep the lights on here
at the campground. Built that gift shop, started selling shirts. I mean,
I got I got to survive here, you got to have electricity,
and so this started a while a while back, and it's built into it's
kind of evolved. I have the second largest snake in the world here at
the headquarters for the public to look at. It's twenty four feet long,
it weighs three hundred and fifty pounds. Hasn't been measured in three years.
The world record is twenty five feet I believe right now if I had Ripley's
or Guinness book back here to measure her again, I have the biggest snake
in the world. And none of this was ever planning. So people come
into the headquarters. It's mainly a place, I'll be honest with you.
It's mainly a place where you can get a T shirt and a bumper sticker.
But there's a lot more to it than that. We have indigenous huts
on the back of the property, that we rent out. I mean there
are two couple hundred bucks a night, but we've got five of those open
air, screened in in wintertime is when I recommend you use those. They're
indigenous huts, They're built by the Indians. Then we have cabins with air
conditioning. We have like five or six of those, and then I have
one hundred and fifty RB sites. We're also licensed by the National Park Service
to do tours in the preserve with pull boats. They're like gondolas and we
make them ourselves out of Cyprus and they hold three or four people. And
then we have guides that work for us who are licensed through the Park Service
to take people out. We do canoe and kayak rentals, and then we
have the animal exhibit, which is located inside the headquarters store, which functions
as the office for the rest of the facility. How did you acquire the
bake? Did you find the snake in the Everglades? I did? I
did? I always laughter, I see these people, Oh they caught the
biggest snake. And yes, the nightly news is as bad as reality TV.
So yeah, I caught that one. That snake almost killed me.
It was a pet that and it's it's the second officially the second biggest snake
in the world. Could be the world record right now. It's twenty four
feet that we know, three hundred and fifty. That's a big snake.
Yeah. Raccoon trying to get my chickens, running down a fence. I
shoot the raccoon out of a tree because I don't want to kill in my
chickens. You know, I don't have a big henhouse. I could do
better. So I go, I'm going to feed the raccoon to my alligators.
We've got a cycle of life here that we lived. So I come
to the house. I go back to where I shot a raccoon, which
was near a big waterfall we have at that time. It wasn't there was
no water in it. It was dry insides got a cave in the back
ground. I knew the coon fell into that wall. So I go in
that waterfall and I'm looking around and I looked on the rock and I saw
a drop of blood where the water cascades off the rock, and I said,
ah, I knew I got him. And I looked up and Goldie
that's her name, was getting ready to bite me right in the face.
At that time, she was eighteen feet long, and she's reticulated by don't
and as she bit me in the face, she easily put a quarter around
my neck, broke my neck and killed me right there. So me and
her got a funny relationship. But I've had her for a long time now
and she's grown to recorcises. So if you want to know who caught the
biggest snake in the Everglades, of course I did. Yeah, what do
you what do you feed her? Dave? She can swallow one hundred and
forty pounds item. She is a reticulating which I mentioned that is the only
snake in the world that hunts and eats people. Humans are on their list
of prey items. They forget the anaconda to get back there. These reticks
are the hugest, longest snakes in the world. They grow upwards of thirty
feet. Okay, she can swallow a human being. But what I do
is I purchase frozen rabbits from a organic farm because you don't want to get
chemicals built up in the snake, steroids and stuff, So we feed them
organic and we get large rabbits from a company that supplies zoos and stuff and
they come frozen on dry ice, and then I pack them in a freezer
and then I feed her maybe three or four eight pound rabbits every two weeks
during the summer. And that seems to be good for her. And you
have to measure what you feed her by looking at her and looking at her
the same way when your own reptiles. A lot of people don't like,
well, how much did it eat? Well, it'll eat as much as
you want to give it. It'll overeat, you know, and that's not
healthy for animals. So you have to be a judge and not be a
like a jail guy, like depriving them of food. Well, you have
to keep it reasonable, and you do that visually by looking at the animal.
That's the only way to do it. Oh my goodness. And you
caught this snake, and I got the biggest snake in the world, so
I'm doing a good job. Okay, Oh my goodness. So if you
found her out there, that tells me that they're all a lot more like
her out there. When that terrifies me, I didn't mean we could talk
about snakes all day. I know a lot about snakes. I've been doing
the python thing here never goes longer than anybody. Everybody called me the gun
gave guy that. When I was four years old, there was a sawmill
out here and the lady, I remember, she have hang out the kitchen
windows, you know, kind of the dress and her kind of her boobs
hanging out there. And I'd be walking by in the water in the woods
and she say, you've got any snakes in your pocket, Dave? And
I reach in my pocket and pull out, you know, five or six
ribbon snakes, and I go, yes, ma'am. You know I've been
I know about snakes and what's going on right now, and you probably haven't
heard about it yet. You've heard about the pythons in the Everglades, right,
yeah. I've also heard about the python hunt. There's a hundred.
Yeah, there's a hunt. I got a hunt going on too. I
got a skunk cape. It's called the Skunk Cape Challenge. It's ten thousand
dollars if you want to be in it. So, I mean, it's
kind of a rich man's thing, but I need that right now. Is
my birthday coming up in September on fifty eight, and I want to have
a good time and I want to have a good time with some people out
with skunk capes, and that ten thousand covers seven days in the Everglades,
airboat swamp, buggies, hunting camps, probably even a night out down on
Pea West. But so like a lifetime dream of a guy maybe who has
has a job at a bank in a city and just wants to do something
completely totally out of the ball, right. Yeah. I get those kinds
of people when I do these, and I don't do them very often,
and a lot of times people don't want to be like, don't tell anybody
I was here. You know. The biggest complaint I get is I don't
charge enough. Believe it or not. Wow, but you didn't charge me
enough for this. You need you need to raise your rate stay Yeah,
oh my goodness. So yeah, I'm getting back to the fact that there's
probably big snakes just like your snake out there everywhere. Yeah, yeah,
they're everywhere. Well, like I said, we could talk about that all.
I can talk about all of all things everybade from beginning him. The
snake hunters that are out here now they've caught like seven thousand of the python
six or seven. Hey, you naturally be if you, I think,
well, that's fantastic. They're being such a good job and getting those mean
snakes out of the everywades. Hey, those people pay my bills. I
make a lot of money off the snay punters. I might cut my own
throat here when I tell you what I'm fixing to tell you. Hopefully none
of them are watching mostly, but I think personally we'd be better off if
they just left those six thousand snakes out there, because all of our wildlife
has gone anyhow at this point, and it's not the snake's fault entirely,
but nature has a way of taking care of itself all over the world,
but especially here in the Everglades. The native species are very resilient, and
exotic species come to pinnacles and then they drastically reduced to manageable levels. That's
all done naturally, And by taking these snakes out and not letting that pinnacle
occur, they keep it here. If they just let it go, nature
will take care of itself. But in the meantime, I'm making money off
these guys, and it's all government stuff. The biggest, the biggest damage
ever done to the Everglades by somebody wanting to help. Now, they didn't
weren't trying to help when they were draining the everglades, they were trying to
develop it. I'm talking about somebody's honestly trying to help the everglades. That
created a disaster that people don't even want to talk about because of the money
involved. And that's the introduction of the Texas cougar to the everglades. That
was the most horrible, horrible thing. It's gonna take another fifty years for
the wildlife to come back here. And so why did they introduce Why did
they introduce the cougar in the first place, Well, because it's a big
cat. People love big cats. That we had thirty here. They said
that they were in breeding and unhealthy and they needed to pump some new jeans
into them. But in the meantime, it wasn't about the thirty cats that
were here. They were taking people's property and cattle ranches and stopping people from
living their lives and destroying cultures, trying to build these areas so they could
put hundreds and hundreds of cats into areas that might could hold fifty or sixty,
and the cats literally starved to death, eating themselves right now they've all
got cancer and they're dying, and it's a big mess. Now. Last
night, a friend of mine who had a night vision he turned his night
vision camera on to look in the field, and when he turned it on,
there's a giant panther standing right in front of a big glow. And
you normally you see the infrared camera shots are like stuff at night, and
it's just kind of fuzzy and you really can't tell what it is. This.
I don't know if it's advanced or not, but this thing just looks
so alive and so big and heavy. This cougar is so big. Our
panthers are small. But they're dying off, thank god. And people gonna
hate. How did you say that you're happy that the cats are dead.
Well, I don't don't know if I'm happy about it, but good lord,
it was not healthy. It just wasn't healthy for them or or wildlife
here. So nature takes care of itself. But I don't like to get
into that. I've had a lot of a lot of personal personal things in
my life affected by those cats, still are today. I fight hard is
to be here because of those cats. Biggest mistake the state of art ever
made, bringing Texas cougars to the overwhe They preach all over their websites about
anxiets. Oh, we've got anxietics. They got the snake program, they
got the pig program, they got program get ready at trees, they got
program to get read at everything. Oh, but then they what is the
program? Oh, my gosh, program. Oh, I don't know.
There's a lot of money in it. These people. My god, Well,
I imagine that you being involved in this skunk ape phenomenal, all these
you probably get a lot of people from different parts of the state that come
to you and say, oh, my gosh, do I have to tell
you? Do I have a story to tell you? What are some of
the stories that you've heard from? Who? About what the skunk ape?
From people? You just ask these questions, so many stories. What Okay,
I'm gonna tell you three skunk gape stories. Okay, Yeah, I
have skunk gape stories every day all my life. Lots and lots I hearn
from the Indians, but I don't. I don't hear any That's what I
want to hear about. I'm so blessed to be in a position I'm in,
and once again refermed back to your initial question. What a people when
they come into the animal of the where they come off the road. What
is it? It's an information it's a meeting ground. It's a place where
people of common interest or curiosities can meet and talk. And it's that's the
research going on. People talking, people meeting, people sharing stories, people
reporting sightings. Back in the seventies, there were some hunters out in a
honey camp in the Everways. They've been out honeting all day. They got
back to the camp, they decided they do some cooking, so they had
some pots, they had some beans cooking on the stove, and they had
the tube that went out at the top of the building so the smoke would
go out. It gets dark. They're playing cards at the card table,
like six guys. They got a lantern sitting there on the table and they're
playing cards. There's an oak tree outside the cabin. He grows over the
cabin. A skunk gape had crawled up that tree. They think it had
smelled that cooking or curiosity falls right through the roof. It's pitch stark.
It falls right onto the table. It busted the lantern. It caught the
cabin on fire. The guys are running around. They got a wild animal
in the cabin. They're trying to get their guns. The oil is on
fire. That's when it busts through the wall and takes out the whole side
wall of the cabin, ran out into the even and they never did know
what it was. They said, you know, maybe it was a bear.
We don't know, but tracks were found in the area just a few
days later. Did you ever hear the story about the National Park Service getting
the skunk cap? Now, yeah, they caught a skunk cape. Now,
this was a long time ago. This was near Flamingo. They had
acquired some properties down there. It was some people living down their fishermen,
and they made this place called Flamingo. Well, in the process they had
to build the road up. They're working on the road and somehow they capture
with ropes this animal. It looks like a big gorilla. And they had
some bunkers that they were storing dynamite in. They emptied the dynamite out of
it. They put it in there. They called their office and said,
hey, we've got a wild animal out here. We don't know what it
is. We need to get y'all out here to see it. By the
time they got down out of Homestead, Florida, down there to where the
place was, they have busted out of the enclosure it was in and ran
off into the every days and they spent days look days looking. That story
has been written up a few times. But you know, for some reason,
I've had personal property taken from me a while back, and all of
those stories seemed to disappear from the news press, the stories that were written.
If I look at it, they just seemed to disappear. Kind of
strange. People don't know it, but that was true. They actually captured
one down in the national part. There's another story of the shooting at one
in the back around seventeen hundred. You hear a lot about that, but
he really can't find the document. Have you heard anything recently? Sometimes stories
that happened recently within the last few years or so. Yeah, I got
one I probably shouldn't tell. Yeah, and I got one you'd probably like
to hear, So I'm gonna tell any one you'd probably like to hear.
Okay, Well, the past couple of years, the majority of the sightings
here in the big Cypress, and I keep track of all of them.
Sightings are reported at both the Oasis visitors Center and at the new visitors center
here, and they're shopping by visitors. They do report sightings there a lot
of times. They're they're directed here to my place afterward. The last few
years, it started with a young couple on the Loop Road, which is
about ten miles from you. They were down there, they had taken a
hiking trail and when they got back to their car, they saw what they
described as being a large chimpanzee in the road walking around. So they went
to the National Park and they said, hey, we just wanted you to
know that there's a chimp down there on that road walking around and walked off
in the bushes. And that's when the Park Service told them, we don't
really have any recorded chimps down here. Maybe you should go talk to that
guy down there at the research headquarters. And I just so happened to be
in and I retired two years ago. By the way, I saw,
I've been up there today, but I don't officially work. But they came
up. I met him and they told me, they said, what are
you talking about? Here? They are they saw They didn't even know what
they saw, and so this was, you know, I said a couple
of years. It was probably four to three years ago, three years ago.
But ever since then, I've been getting steady reports. Last year was
record number of reports down in that area, and all the reports were the
same that it was a like a size of an arrange thing. So I
can only think that there's a young skunk cape down there. They're just wandering
around in that area. And one of the python hunters, one of the
contractors for the state, found the tracks of the skunk cape down there and
he photographed them. I got copies of that, and he's a state contractor,
so he's no dummy. He knows what he's doing. Time goes so
fast. I was contacted by Florida Fishing Wildlife, I don't know, probably
eight years ago to investigate some tracks that they had found up near a Mockley,
Florida, which is a vegetable town, what a farm town. And
I went there and there were these huge tracks in the ditch, definitely skunk
cape. We started following them. We were a couple of days into it
when we got back into the Everglades and they led us to a huge fence
and facility. I could hear noises coming out of the forest, like whoo
who crazy noises behind this fence. The tracks winner I've been trying to light
that cigarette for like ten minutes. It's not like him chase. The tracks
went around the fence and then disappeared down into the everglades and there and so
people saying, well, what's that? What's kind of when they got apes
out there in a cage or so? I did a story was the Smithsonian
magazine, and during a story I told him about what I had found up
there with FWC. And you know, he was kind of sneaking, but
we we spent a couple of days together. Well, he got in his
car, he went up there, and he drove around and drove around,
and he found the road that led into the preserve. And before you could
go into the preserve, it says do not go past this point. If
you're a federal employee, if you're a government agent, if you're a police
serving a search, war, contact this number. It doesn't matter who you
are, do not enter this facility. I mean it was a big sign
and a minute and it was called Primate Products. When they started looking into
it. It's called primate products. So he does the story for Smithsonian magazine
and they shut the facility down. If you go there now it's all gone.
But he includes the photographs that he took as evidence that it was there.
And he went there and he saw the facility. So it's an interesting
story in Smithsonian. M I imagine now with all these people who have cameras
on their homes and stuff like that for security reasons, might start picking up
stuff that they didn't realize was on their camera. They might get a good
picture sometimes, for me, how Bigfoot looking through the windows. When the
security cameras came out. They don't see doomy home security videos. But back
before that, everybody saw Bigfoot standing at the window. But now, yeah,
some people say they can they can see the gland off of the lens
they know about. It goes back to the UFO, the intelligence thing and
all of that. You would and that's another misconception, even if you kind
of you kind of led into it. Everybody does. Don't feel bad but
that there's really been no good picture. But that's not true. There have
been tons of good pictures. I see punters coming in with photographs off their
trail camps. They are very luctant to hit them over. They think that
they're worth money, that if they keep them, that they were going to
make their pictures famous or whatever. But it is it is a misconception that
there's not a lot of good photographs out there. They're feeling a lot of
good photographs out there. There's good we just don't see it. On the
back to the reality television shows. We don't see the real shows. It's
a shame. That's a shame. I hate to say. There. So
you say that you get a lot of stories that come in because they've come
and report them to you. You said, so you what on the average
would you say you get? The average stories that I hear are in the
thousands. I hearateful stories all day long. But as far as sightings here
in the preserve, people coming in saying we just saw a stock game.
M I think it's around to see it. There's a lot of people.
We were here last week, saw one, we were here last years,
but sighted that day. Emergency what I call emergency siety just for the sake
of maybe it's the current about twelve interesting. Well, that's a funny lot,
I think, so. Yeah, Fish we'll tell the listeners how they
could find your research center if they wanted to stop by and have conversation with
you and the people that are there. Sharing skunk Ape Headquarters in the Everglades.
You can google it. It'll come up when in the business called skunk
Cape Headquarters, and that's how you get to this location. I'm Dave Sheiy
and I got a skunk Cape dot info not skunk ape dot com, skunk
ape dot info. I believe we'll take you to everything that we have to
offer as far as with facility. Wonderful. Well, we visited the Keys
several years back, my husband and I with our daughters. We loved it,
and I didn't know you were around there. So next time I come,
I'm going to pop in and say remember me. I'll remember you.
Yeah, I was supposed to be down in the Keys. Now I do
the treasure hunting, which is a real thing. It's huge. I've got
some Spanish gallions that we're timpting to start recovering. It's a thirty year project.
We've mapped sixty five square miles of C four Wow. We have divers
out boats were out mapping today. That's so cool. President. Yeah,
I'm the president's assistant to all of that, so and I like that.
I like that it's it's a form of hunting. I'm a hunter. I
was just born into hunting, and so the treasure hunting falls right into align
with that. Although one, I hope you hit it rich, Helpe,
you hit it rich. The ship the ships are five hundred years old,
so you got a wow. That's wonderful. Well, thanks so much,
Dave for giving me your time today. I really appreciate this was a lot
of fun talking to you. I really enjoyed it. Yeah, it's been
nice talking to you. And Brad Happy birthday on your skunk Cape endeavor in
September. Yeah. Yeah, I think the skunk Cape challenge is going to
be somebody getting up the gumption to come up with ten thousand dollars. That's
a lot of money. So it'll be interested to see who those individuals are
and I'm looking for Yeah, yeah, i'll bet. Well, thanks again,
Yeah, thank you very much. And to the listeners. If you
like listening to this week's episode and you're into all things paranormal, check out
my other show, Eleanor Wagner's Creeping It Real Podcast out of the Coast to
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the links to them on my website, Author Eleanor Wagner dot com. I
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Thank you paranormal enthusiasts for tuning in today. I hope you'll come back again.
Remember to tap into your own gifts, everyone has them, and in
the meantime, make sure you're creeping it real