The iconic museum, located alongside Highway 9 in Felton, has embodied Santa Cruz’s quirkiness for twenty years.
As Ruggs retires, the museum will retire alongside him.
“Well, anywhere from 30 to 70 people come in the door and, they’ll check everything out, and, I show them our local sighting map, and, they’re usually amazed to see how many sightings there have been in this area. I was amazed, too, because when I opened it, I didn’t expect that to happen,” Ruggs said.
Ruggs says he first saw Bigfoot when he was a kid.
“I looked upstream, and then when I look back towards the woods. Whoa, here’s this big hairy guy standing there looking at me. And we had eye contact for about the count of three. Then I heard my mother screaming. Mikey, where are you? So I thought, oh, jeez, I better get back,” Ruggs recalled.
The Sea Lion as originally described in the 1500s from The John Carter Brown Library
For the second in a series of curious creatures once the cryptids of their time, we talk about the sea lion.
I can imagine a sea lion must have been quite a site if you had no knowledge or experience with one, I’d probably still want to pat one even then. But let’s take a look at one of it’s first sightings in Brazil in the 1500s…
In 1564, when the Portuguese had just arrived here, they found a monster on the beach? That’s right. It was where the city of São Vicente is today, on the coast of São Paulo. The story goes back to Pero de Magalhães Gândavo, one of our first historians. He says that, one night, the Indians pulled out of the sea a creature that measured more than 3 meters in length, full of fins and hair all over its body, “and on its snout it had very large silks like whiskers”. They named it ipupiara, or water demon in ancient Tupi.”
A text from that time tells a tale that goes a little like this;
Explorer Baltasar Ferreira killed this marine monster off the coast of São Vicente (present-day Santos in the state of São Paulo) in 1564. The monster is described as being 15 palms long, covered with hair, and with silky bristles like a mustache on its muzzle.
Today they say they still aren’t sure what the creature really was, but it is thought to be a lost sea lion that swam into their waters. A statue of the creature, which is thought to be what inspired the Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Shape of Water, still stands today…
Discover in-depth articles on monsters, cryptids, UFOs, ghosts, lost treasures and the Tombstone Thunderbird Photo. Dive into the world of mysterious topics at Thunderbird Photo.
— Read on thunderbirdphoto.com/f/the-illinois-cloud-man
We in the cryptozoology community post often about the beloved thylacine, but for me the part of its history I have a hard time coming to terms with is its last days at the zoo and the films which appear to be a dank miserable zoo environment.
But how was their care really? Who ran that zoo? Maybe if we know a little bit about that it may be easier to study the last of these amazing creatures.
It turns out that this zoo wasn’t as uncaring as the video made it seem by its age and quality.
Mary Robert with her thylacines
A women named Mary Roberts opened the Beaumaris Zoo on her property in Hobart in 1875.
Mary had no formal schooling in zoology, but she did have a passion for Tasmanian fauna. Mary began sharing her passion with the general public in 1895.
Her great love and care for the thylacine was well known. She became the first woman to successfully breed them in captivity. So loved by her they were, that she wrote a manual on the keeping, caring, and breeding of the thylacine.
She was accepted into the Zoological Society of London, where she began gaving lectures on the care of these amazing marsupials.
In 1921 Mary Roberts passed away and the zoo and its many inhabitants were offered to the Tasmanian government, who declined the offer sadly. Then they were cared for by a Scottish farmer who was a great nature enthusiast. The Beaumaris Zoo was eventually moved to a location in Queens.
Sadly the last known living tiger died in 1936, the zoo itself closed a year later in 1937. There are only a few remains left of the zoo’s buildings where it stood last…
The skull of the last thylacine
The remains of the last thylacine were given to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, who being unaware they had the last specimen of its kind, did a traveling exhibit with them instead of working on proper storage and cataloguing.
But how does all this make you feel now? Is it better to see those videos knowing Mary Roberts truly cared for them and tried to educate everyone on their proper care?
The Tiger enclosure
For me personally it makes it a little better understanding their history with at least their time with her. I still question their care in their last days . They appear so skinny in the videos, and just knowing the last one died due a cold spell, because they weren’t put in the proper habitat that night just doesn’t help me.
I pray they had some affection along the way. And as much as I would love to see these elusive creatures alive, I don’t agree with the de-extinction plan for them.
Humans are doing a number on this planet causing extinction and near extinction of many of its species. So the idea that it would be a good thing to bring them back in a time we are killing off others just doesn’t make sense and seems highly unethical to me.
What are your thoughts on the de-extinction of the thylacine? Do you think this world can support and keep them alive now in its current state? Let me know.
I told a few folks about this over the years and they think I was nuts. But doesn’t matter what they think. I was close enough to know what it was. I would say about less than 50 ft. Right in the middle of a fire road.
In December 1977, my dad, uncle and my dad’s other friends and myself went up to the cabin owned by a hunters club in Gardner, Mass. We went to spend the night, cook food and my dad and his friends like to play cards after eating supper. Myself and a friend used the snowmobile with a sled attached to the back, we took turns driving the ski doo around and the other would stand on the foot rest on the sled.
The area was in northern central Massachusetts, very close to New Hampshire boarder. The cabin is in Ashburnham Mass. It’s about 2.5 miles up a fire road called Old Colony Road. I remember it was a snowy winter that year. The area where we saw this thing was right on the edge of a swamp, old train tracks run right thru the area and crosses the fire road that we used to get to the cabin.
It was about 4 p.m. or so, it was just getting a little dark. My friend and I left the cabin with the snowmobile, he was driving first and I was on the foot rest on the sled. We left and came up to the swamp, crossed over the tracks and headed down the road about 50 ft or so. It was getting a little late and we decided to not go to far so we turned the sled around on the road. Had to pick it up because of the narrowness of the road. Once we turned it around it was my turn to drive. So now we’re facing the tracks and the swamp is on both sides of the road. the road goes right thru the swamp and the tracks cross right by the edge of the swamp.
At this point I looked behind me to see if my friend was on the sled and holding on, when I looked up I saw this creature walking on 2 legs like a human. He crossed right by the tracks at the edge of the swamp and crossed the road right in front of us. I remember it looking at us and I remember the arms swing clearly. Just like the pictures I have seen from your site. Very similar. Anyway, I remember the its size, that’s what was scarey, so large, I’d say about 7to 9 ft high, weight about 400 to 500 pounds. At least for something that size it would most likely be heavy. I know the woods there well. I’ve spent years in the military and hunt every year. I have been trained in tracking and survival in the woods so I know what I am saying and what I saw. But the thing took about 2 steps and he was across the road. All black hair, didn’t notice any smells, but I can tell you this. I won’t forget that day ever. It was cold anyway and with no breeze the smell of it wouldn’t travel far. My friend was shocked. He won’t even mention it when I see him these days. He told one person and they treated him like he was on drugs. So thats why I never wanted to tell to many people.”
Crews found not one, but two strange footprints in his niece’s driveway near Payne’s Chapel Road, just two miles from the Bulloch/Jenkins County line Tuesday. The prints appear humanlike, but only show four toes. The largest measures 19″ long and 11″ wide, and was way deeper than Crews was able to make one of his own prints, and he weighs about 250 pounds. In fact, the off prints dwarf his size 13 EEE shoe prints, he said. Crews’ niece was taking her children to the end of the driveway Tuesday morning when she spotted the prints and called Crews. “She said she heard the dogs, which were in the house, raising cain around 4 a.m.,” he said. “They wouldn’t shut up.”
“The new research began after Javan resident and conservationist Ripi Yanur Fajar reported seeing a big cat jump between a road and a plantation near the village of Cipeundeuy in the forest of South Sukabumi in August 2019. Researchers visited the site nine days after the alleged sighting and found a hair on a nearby fence, along with potential tiger footprints and claw marks.“
The new research began after Javan resident and conservationist Ripi Yanur Fajar reported seeing a big cat jump between a road and a plantation near the village of Cipeundeuy in the forest of South Sukabumi in August 2019. Researchers visited the site nine days after the alleged sighting and found a hair on a nearby fence, along with potential tiger footprints and claw marks.
— Read on nexusnewsfeed.com/article/climate-ecology/is-the-javan-tiger-back-from-extinction-new-study-ignites-controversy/
The Javan tigerwas anative to theIndonesian island ofJava. It was one of threetiger populations that lived on the Sunda Islands during thelast glacial period. The tiger’s naturalhabitat was decreasing continuously as more land were needed for agriculture. Since no evidence of a Javan tiger was found during several studies in the 1980s and 1990s, it was determined that it was extinct in 2008.
“In or round 1557, Jean Lerius and two other members of the company were trekking through a forest in the interior of Brazil with some local Tupinamba Indian guides but armed only with swords or bows and arrows when, while passing through a deep valley there, they abruptly encountered at a distance of only thirty paces or so a very large reptilian creature of extremely distinctive appearance, squatting on top of a hill in the heat of noon, with one of its forefeet raised. Lerius described it as a lizard bigger than the body of a man, measuring 5-6 ft long, yet its most eyecatching feature was not its size but rather its extraordinary tegument. For according to Lerius, this unfamiliar animal was entirely covered in rough white scales that resembled oyster shells (and presumably, therefore, were opalescent, or nacreous, i.e. resembling mother of pearl?”
It must be amazing to have possibly been the first learned human to see a creature like this. The very roots of cryptozoology, to find undiscovered creatures such as this. I feel like people believe it’s just about filming a weekend stake out at a bigfoot hotspot. And as fun as that is, don’t forget to look around the rest of the forest as you may be the next person to discover something new.
Looking for bigfoot evidence is important to me, as you probably know, but learning the fascinating historical tales of every creature’s first appearance to man is wonderful and fascinating…
TGIF everyone, be safe in the forest this weekend…
And follow along with the Shuker Nature’s blog if you get a chance, link is above….
Sasysquatchgirl 