At 12:09 AM 10/16/02, Robert Seeberger wrote:
>http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=BIGBIRD-10-15-02&cat=AN
>
>A giant winged creature, like something out of Jurassic Park, has reportedly
>been sighted several times in Southwest Alaska in recent weeks.
>Villagers in Togiak and Manokotak say they have seen a huge bird that's much
>bigger than anything they have seen before.
>
>A pilot says he spotted the creature while flying passengers to Manokotak
>last week. He calculated that its wingspan matched the length of a wing on
>his Cessna 207. That's about 14 feet.
>
>Other people have put the wingspan in a similar range.
>
>Scientists aren't sure what to make of the reports. No one doubts that
>people in the region west of Dillingham have seen a very large rapto-like
>bird. But biologists and other people familiar with big Alaska birds say
>they're skeptical it's that big.
>
>A recent sighting of the mystery bird occurred Oct. 10 when Moses Coupchiak,
>a 43-year-old heavy equipment operator from Togiak, 40 miles west of
>Manokotak, saw the bird flying toward him from about two miles away as he
>worked his tractor.
>
>"At first I thought it was one of those old-time Otter planes," Coupchiak
>said. "Instead of continuing toward me, it banked to the left, and that's
>when I noticed it wasn't a plane."
>
>The bird was "something huge," he said. "The wing looks a little wider than
>the Otter's, maybe as long as the Otter plane."
>
>The bird flew behind a hill and disappeared. Coupchiak got on the radio and
>warned people in Togiak to tell their children to stay away.
>
>Pilot John Bouker said he was highly skeptical of reports of "this great big
>eagle" that is two or three times the size of a bald eagle. "I didn't put
>any thought into it."
>
>But early this week while flying into Manokotak, Bouker, owner of Bristol
>Bay Air Service, looked out his left window and 1,000 feet away, "there's
>this big ... . bird," he said.
>
>"The people in the plane all saw him," Bouker said. "He's huge, he's huge,
>he's really, really big. You wouldn't want to have your children out."
>
>Nicolai Alakayak, a freight and passenger driver from Manokotak who was
>flying with Bouker, said the creature looked like an eagle and was as large
>as "a little Super Cub."
>
>Comparison to an eagle, certainly. Super Cub? Probably not, scientists said.
>
>"I'm certainly not aware of anything with a 14-foot wingspan that's been
>alive for the last 100,000 years," said federal raptor specialist Phil
>Schemf in Juneau.
>
>Schemf, other biologists, a village police officer and teachers at the
>Manokotak School said the sightings could be of a Steller's sea eagle, a
>species native to northeast Asia and one of the world's largest eagles. It's
>about 50 percent bigger than a bald eagle.
Meanwhile, car washes in Togiak and Manokotak are <beat> cleaning up
<rimshot> . . .
--Ronn! :)
I always knew that I would see the first man on the Moon.
I never dreamed that I would see the last.
--Dr. Jerry Pournelle
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