The Complete Guide To Mysterious Beings - Galaksija

nearby buildings, pursuing insects. Their wavering tails are tipped with a poisonous barb that
paralyzes their prey. Their sting has been known to kill men. In the little village of Abu Rawash, not
far from the Great Pyramid of Gizah, we met a family of snake hunters who were so adept at
handling these loathsome creatures that they even put scorpions on their faces and let them crawl
around while we took pictures.
When you travel through scorpion country it becomes a habit to shake out your shoes every
morning in case one of the little monsters has staked out a claim in the toe and is lying in wait to
give you a new kind of hotfoot.
Fossils and other evidence dating back 350 million years indicate that giant scorpions or euripterids
ranging from five to nine feet long were once plentiful on this planet. Maybe they were the source
of the ”racial memory” which still haunts us.
There are spiders on this planet so big that they prey upon birds and snakes. While boa constrictors
crush all the bones of their victims before swallowing them whole, spiders discharge a very potent
fluid over their trapped prey. This fluid liquifies the victim, for spiders cannot eat solid food.
Lizards, snakes, and fish have been killed by giant spiders and liquified in a matter of hours.
Nature works in complex ways. All kinds of animals and insects have developed weird and even
ridiculous digestive systems. We have sponges that pump water through their cells to extract
whatever food particles might exist. There are fish that climb trees, snakes that can glide, birds that
can't fly, bats that can't land, microscopic forms of life that live on stone and even lead.
We have trees and plants that feast upon insects and living things. There are even animals that are
cunningly disguised as plants, such as crinoids: brilliantly colored things with featherlike arms
which can exude a paralyzing poison. Not so long ago there were myths of a man-eating plant on
Madagascar but these eventually proved to be without foundation.
The famous Venus's-flytrap, a bug-consuming plant, has been found growing naturally in only one
spot on the earth. That spot is an ancient meteor crater in North Carolina. Colonial Governor Arthur
Dobbs discovered the flytrap in 1760, and there has been much speculation since then that the plant
was somehow introduced to our world by a crashing meteor.
When we try to assess these wonders, we are forced to ask ourselves how many other marvels may
exist with us without our knowledge? The gorilla was considered a mere myth for many years, as
was the okapi, a crazy combination of horse and zebra which was first captured in Africa in the
early 1900s. A ferocious giant lizard, the Komodo dragon, remained folklore until the 1930s when
an American expedition visited Indonesia and brought one back alive.
A world that can produce vampire bats, flying snakes, and nine-foot scorpions might well be able to
serve as the nesting place for fifteen-foot-tall apes and giant birds. The Abominable Snowman is no
more impossible than a fifteen-foot-tall penguin and, believe it or not, there is some evidence (but
not much – see Chapter 5) that such a breed of penguins exists. There is also considerable evidence,
which we will review later on, that ten-foot-tall giant men once roamed this little mudball of ours.
The Type B scientists sit in their campus ivory towers and scoff while men like Dr. Ditmars poke
around inhospitable jungles and caves reeking with bat guano. In any given year the back pages of
your own local newspaper carries dozens of small ”human interest” items about new sightings of
sea serpents, ABSMs, and the funny folk who ride around in flying saucers. Are all these things
journalistic put-ons? Are we still wallowing in the myths and nonsense of the Middle Ages?