Mysterious Creatures : A Guide to Cryptozoology

above, rosy below. Head the size of a man’s fingernail.
Horns above the eyes. Tiny fangs. Extremely
quick-acting, deadly venom.
Behavior: Buries itself in the sand to await prey.
Habitat: Desert.
Distribution: Mexico; Arizona; New Mexico.
Significant sightings: Charles Lummis met
with this snake on three occasions, the first in
June 1889 in Valencia County, New Mexico.
The Pueblo Indians, for whom rattlesnakes are
a familiar totem, avoid it entirely.
Present status: Possibly extinct.
Possible explanations:
(1) The Mexican horned pitviper (Ophryacus
undulatus) has supraocular horns but is a
semiarboreal snake found only in the
mountains of southern Mexico. Its range
may have been more extensive in the past.
(2) The Black-tailed montane pitviper
(Porthidium melanurum) also has
supraocular horns, but it has a distinctly
black tail and lateral stripes and is also
limited to Mexico.
Sources: Charles F. Lummis, The King of the
Broncos, and Other Stories of New Mexico (New
York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1897); Chad
Arment, “Notes on Lummis’ Pichu-cuate,”
North American BioFortean Review 2, no. 3
(December 2000): 5–10, http://www.
strangeark.com/nabr/NABR5.pdf.
Lusca
Giant octopus-like Cephalop od of the
Caribbean Sea.
Etymology: Bahamas Creole word.
Variant names: Giant scuttle, Him of the
Hairy Hands, Lucsa, Luska.
Physical description: Said to be half octopus
and half shark or half eel and half squid. Width,
50 feet. Phosphorescent eyes. Tentacles with
sucker tips.
Behavior: Moves with the speed of a shark.
Surfaces at night when the moon is full. Possibly
feeds on crabs and shrimp. Said to drag boats
and people into the water with its tentacles.
Habitat: Blue holes, narrow pits that plunge
as much as 200 feet straight down through rock
and coral into deep water. Some are offshore,
others are in interior lagoons.
Distribution: Andros and Grand Bahama Islands
in the Bahamas; Caicos Islands; off the
coast of Cuba.
Possible explanations:
(1) Gigantic Octopus of the kind found
washed ashore in Florida in 1896.
(2) Misidentifications of the Giant squid
(Architeuthis), suggested by Bruce Wright.
(3) Tidal surges and vortices at the mouth
of blue holes could be mistaken for the
movement of giant tentacles.
Sources: J. S. George, “A Colossal Octopus,”
American Naturalist 6 (1872): 772; François
Poli, Sharks Are Caught at Night (Chicago:
Henry Regnery, 1959), pp. 102–103; Bruce S.
Wright, “The Lusca of Andros,” Atlantic
Advocate 51 (June 1967): 32–39; Forrest G.
Wood and Joseph G. Gennaro, “An Octopus
Trilogy,” Natural History 80 (March 1971):
15–24, 84–87; Gary S. Mangiacopra, “The
Great Ones: A Fragmented History of the Giant
and the Colossal Octopus,” Of Sea and Shore 7,
no. 2 (Summer 1976): 93–96; Robert Palmer,
“In the Lair of the Lusca,” Natural History 96
(January 1987): 42–47; Gary S. Mangiacopra,
Michel Raynal, Dwight G. Smith, and David F.
Avery, “Octopus giganteus: Still Alive and Hiding
Where? Lusca and Scuttles of the Caribbean,”
Of Sea and Shore 18, no. 1 (Spring 1996): 5–12;
Michel Raynal, “Des poulpes ‘de dimension
anormale’?” http://perso.wanadoo.fr/cryptozoo/
floride/poulpe3. htm.
LUSCA 303