SECOND INVESTIGATION: "SWAMP APE"In south Florida, throughout Everglades National Park and 10,000 Island's area, a stinky hair ape man is stalking the area. Also spotted in the Cypress National Preserve, this "Skunk Ape" as they call it because of the horrible smell it admits, blends in with its surroundings, is said to be 8 feet high with a large dome head and prominent brow, and massive chest. They flew to Fort Lauderdale, Florida where Josh could miss the opportunity to harass Jael about reading the "Twilight" series of books. After getting their vehicle, they headed due west from Fort Lauderdale to the Cypress National Preserve. This area is over a million acres of swamp and uninhabitable by humans, with roads not existing in the interior. Along the way they stopped at the "official" Florida research center. This place had everything you ever wanted on the Skunk Ape and even a large python that seems to roam the place freely, yikes! They head off to meet with Dave Shealy, who founded the Skunk Ape research center and had a terrifying encounter with the beast. He took Josh to the remote area where the sighting occurred. While sitting at a tree stand he noticed that about 100 yards away, a large hairy man-like creature was looking right at him. He continues to tell Josh that there are 100's of sightings and there are some people that have come up missing in the everglades through the years. He uses raw meat, such a dear liver, to attract the animal to capture its existence. They grab a meal of frog legs and alligator and make one more stop before heading out to the everglades. Radio host Ed Craft swears he saw the Swamp Monster while camping. He tells Josh that you must be willing to go where no other humans will go in order to find the Swamp Ape. This is definitely a job up the DT team’s alley.
After getting to the Big Cypress Preserve, they trade their vehicle for a Swamp Buggy to navigate through the first part of the bog. Josh stops to talk to Billy, a Centennial Indian, whose tribe members have witnessed the Skunk Ape for years. He tells Josh that just two days ago some on his tribe members during a tribal ceremony spotted the Skunk ape. Josh then arranges with Tom Shirley, the game warden, to use swamp boats to get to the location of the sightings. After 3 hours, they finally arrived in the area of the recent sightings when Josh spots something big in the woods walking around. He said that it was large and walking upright. They looked for a half an hour to see if it would appear again but found nothing but alligators. After the boats dropped them off, they headed in to find an area for their base camp. They had investigated swampy areas before and were prepared for almost anything.
After finding a good area for base camp, the set up 4 infrared cameras around the perimeter and 4 trap cameras with bait sitting in front of them. Josh was told to watch for water moccasins and panthers that are in the area. Josh and Jael head off with the thermal camera and to do a sweep of the area. Before getting the last trap camera set up, they hear something big and close in the swamps near them. They also heard lots of splashing in the water. Bicha is out putting bait near the first infrared camera and hears something walking behind them. They start experiencing big time movement all around them. Josh and Jael head back to base camp and see alligators with one heading towards them. They continue on their sweep when Jael hears something moving around them and in the water. They both hear something walking around in the brush near them. In one of the cameras at base camp they spot something moving in front of it. It looks like a panther and they warn Josh about what they saw. Meanwhile, Josh and Jael are trudging through water and see a Cottonmouth snake which is poisonous and they slowly back away. Back at base camp, they see something streak by camera 3 and then it gets knocked down. They head out to investigate and find the camera lying on the ground and the bait was gone. They then see something big in the trees in front of them and hear it moving all around them. They kept hearing branches breaking. At the same time, Josh and Jael are still walking in the swamp and this time spot an alligator and back away from it. Josh and Mike head out to where camera 3 was tipped over to see if they can capture any audio. Josh got a hit on the thermal but can't distinguish what it was. They also experienced a very loud noise like something was crashing down. They take their evidence back to Los Angeles where Josh sits down with former Los Angeles zoo curator, Mike Dee, to go over the footage. The thing caught on the thermal camera appeared to be upright in a standing position. He said that it could be a black bear, but there wasn't enough on the thermal to say for sure. He did feel that the animal caught on the base camp's camera could be a Florida Panther. It is very rare to capture a picture of this animal especially at night. Could the eyewitnesses be seeing a bear? With all the reports of seeing this Skunk Ape, the investigations are far from being over.
~Julie~
~Julie~
