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Giant Raptor Terrorizes Alaskan Village
An anonymous reader writes "A giant raptor, rumored to have a wingspan of 14 feet, has been spotted by a number of Alaskans in the general vicinity of Manokotak. There is speculation that the beast could be a Steller's sea eagle, but Phil Schempf, of the Fish and Wildlife Service, is dubious: He says that no creature that large has flown in more than 100,000 years. Read about it in this Anchorage Daily News article, which notes that residents have been warned to keep their children indoors."
Man...just the idea of 13 foot wing span makes my lips start to twitch. UMMM....wings....hot sauce...FIRE UP THE GRILL!!!
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
.. it's just our friend Steve Ballmer practising his new conference routine.
Ladies, form queue here -->
It got frozen during the last ice age. Lucky for it global warming thawed it out...
Invest in some skepticism.
blarg.
but could we have ourselves a Godzilla-movie-like event? Could something have been frozen, or trapped inside a cave or mountain or underground cavern with a liveable ecosystem and now is suddenly exposed to the outside? Its reaction may be because of the light or the feeling its territory is being encroached upon. I will contradict myself twice - if it were an earth-dweller it would have likely evolved like other creatures do and not have any wings; and even I think it is not likely that the stuff of 50s science fiction would appear in real life outside of a hoax; but you never know. (shout out to the Fish and Wildlife Service though they did me wrong the EIGHT years I slaved for them)
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
Diomedea exulans has the largest wingspan, capable
of spending several months aloft hunting the ocean
and never touching land. They don't weigh as much as the Steller's but they are big. But they are
exclusive to the Southern Hemisphere. Maybe one got very lost. Possibly blown off course by a hurricane. Maybe the russians have been busy with genetic experimentation. Or perhaps it's a Chernobyl migrant.
http://tinyurl.com/3t236
1: Feed pigeon massive steroid doses.
2:
3: Big assed bird!!!
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
The top of the food chain no longer belongs to mankind! Pray! Repent!
i know it means bird of prey, but did anyone else think of this when they read the headline about a giant raptor?
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Visit the Alaska Community Database for more info on Manokotak (including a better location map).
This is how I'd deal with the problem: Listen
Software Wars
More here (in case it gets slashdotted) - http://www.knoxstudio.com/shns/story.cfm?pk=BIGBIR D-10-15-02&cat=AN
You've got mail. Pattern baldness. - Crow
(yay news.google!)
Southwest Alaskans say bird is the size of a small plane
Seattle Post Intelligencer,WA
A super-sized bird in Alaska-Scripps Howard News Service
Raptor-like bird spotted in Alaska-Ananova
Southwest Alaskans say bird is the size of a small plane-Kenai Peninsula
THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS O
IANAP (i am not a paleotologist) but last time I checked, raptors didn't fly. Granted my knowledge of raptors is limited to Jurrasic Park movies and BBC specials but c'mon. Regardless of whether it actually looks like a raptor it would most likely resemble a pterodactyl since it has that massive wingspan and, oh yeah, it flies.
eom
Worst. Sig. Ever!
"No, but I want to meet him, because the bearded lady says they call him Big Bird cause he's got a really big---"
...it isn't a live bird at all?
Ok, I'll put on the tinfoil hat and ponder crazy things:
In the past couple years someone made a model pterodactyl that flew. Add a camera and a(nother?) radio and you might have an interesting unmanned spy craft. You'd have to test this someplace before deployment of course... and if it scared people away from it might be better yet. (Though if it was too different/big it could attract attention... but then that is also useful - it can distract from something as well.)
Maybe the russians have been busy with genetic experimentation.
Or the chinise or the USA.
mp3: l33t term for empty.
The Chicken Cow by Wesley Willis
This beast comes out when it is 25 degrees below zero
It can rip your head off
It can fly as high as a bird
It can bite your face
The Chicken Cow
The Chicken Cow
The Chicken Cow
The Chicken Cow
This beast killed as many as 100,000 people
Its wings can flap like a bird
It can break a glass
It can also stab you in the ass
The Chicken Cow
The Chicken Cow
The Chicken Cow
The Chicken Cow
This beast attacked my brother
It stabbed him in the ass while he was in the cold
His hands were frostbitten
His hands were also numb
The Chicken Cow
The Chicken Cow
The Chicken Cow
The Chicken Cow
Rock over London, Rock on, Chicago!
Blockbuster Video, wow, what a difference!
That's Bigboo TAY! TAY!
Someone with a modified delta flyer has the time of his life now.
-- Cheers!
As a resident of the Washington, DC area and someone who wonders if I'll live long enough to make it to my car after leaving work, I can say I needed a story like this.
Part of me is fascinated that there might be a bird out there this large, another part of me is thinking YEAH -- BRING ON GODZILLA!
What is it going to take to make you believe!?
Look! Up in the sky!
It's a bird!
It's a plane!
No, it's a bird the size of a small plane!
</WeakJoke>
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
Invest in some skepticism.
Fair enough.
"In our next story, the economic downturn hasn't been affecting everyone. Manokotak, a tiny village in Alaska has been experiencing a huge tourism boom, after villages reported sightings of a "fucking huge, pterodactyl-like beast". Asked whether he feels the creature will show itself soon to any tourists, the village mayor responded, "Sure, and you can make your chances even better by investing in a pair of official Manokotak beast-spotting binoculars. And perhaps you'd prefer to do your watching through the enormous plate-glass windows of our comfortable beast-themed Manokotak restauraunt."
Claims that the beast is a hoax have been violently rejected by villages. One man said, "That's stupid. Who would have anything to gain in making up a story about a giant bird?"
May we never see th
I'd say that making profit with a giant, pumped up pigeon is about as plausible as the .com business strategies.
May we never see th
When I was a little kid, three or four years old, my Aunt Lucy told me to stop crying, or the giant kid eating bird would hear me, and then I was done for. I was terrified for over a week. I was such a basket case that my Grandpa had to go outside with his shotgun, and pretend to shoot the kid eating bird, which he claimed was in a tree in the front yard. I am dismayed to learn that this ratptor from hell actually exists!
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
.. the first rule of aerial surveillance is to make yourself look like a huge flying lizard. That's also why you saw all those CIA guys in Afghanistan dressed up in the Tyranasaur suits.
Incidentally, I assume you're talking about the 18-foot pterodactyl captured in the IMAX film On the Wing in 1986. It was built by Paul McReady, who also built the Gossamer Condor, the world's first human-powered aircraft.
You can buy (somewhat) similar models here
Our many varied theories over the past have been wrong. All of our studies and science have not yielded the truth. Bigfoot as the cultural myth we know does not exist, for we now have proof that it is not a furry guy in the woods, but rather this creature.
"Hey brother Christian with your high and mighty errand / your actions speak so loud I can't hear a word you're saying"
save a plant, eat a cow
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
maybe we've expanded our GM foods research from just veggies, great, now i have to worry about humongous chickens
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
Isn't it funny -- you ever notice that other bird meats don't taste like chicken? I mean, duck doesn't taste like chicken. Quail doesn't taste like chicken. Turkey doesn't taste like chicken. Ostrich doesn't even resemble chicken.
I'm thinking that chicken just tastes like reptile.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You only need to see one 300 pound halibut, 2000 pound moose, pumpkin the size of a truck, cabbage that you could roof your house with, ravens 4 feet tall, 30 pound king crab with 6 foot long legs and ouf course foot long buds to belive a story like this. I lived in Alaska 18 years and I do not doubt this one bit.
Everything is bigger there.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
I don't remember which channel or the name of the program, but awhile back there was a documentary that discussed the Native American legend of the "Thunderbird" that correllated it to reports of a large bird that has supposedly snatched a couple of children in the last few decades.
They theorized that a large bird may have survived extinction, but have extremely few members left alive. The bird was thought to have a wingspan betwen 12 and 20 feet.
Might be the Nessy of the Americas, but it would be interesting to find proof. It sounds to me like these could be the same bird.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
I think it's more than just a coincidence that the sighting of this giant bird perfectly coincides with this year's harvest of the world-famous Alaskan Thunderfuck.
Citizens demand slashback for this story...
[o]_O
Although if someone kills it to see what it is, and it is in fact an Albatross, they'll have bad luck...
-tid242
With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. --Carl Sagan
David Bruce (a pen name for a british falconer named Sam Barnes) wrote a book a number year called 'Bird of Jove.' It's represented as a true account of Sam's experiences with a very large himalyan eagle, Aquila Chrysaetos Daphanea, also called the berkut eagle. Although the authors use of a pen name to write about his own expereinces makes the book seem somewhat fraudulent, a number of respected falconers suggest that it is a true account, although self agrandizing. Mr. Barnes Berkut had a reported wieght of about 26 pounds for a female bird. The California condor has a a body wieght of about 20-24 pounds and a wind span of 9-9.5 feet.. It just doesn't seem that unlikely that there are birds that are slightly larger floating around out in the wilderness of Canada/alaska/russia.
josh
Isaac Asimove wrote one of his science essays on this. I remember reading it as a kid. I remember he calculated that a winged horse, like Pegasus, would need a wingspan of 200 feet -- just like the Gossamer Condor.
One of the Alaskans compared the mystery bird to a Twin Otter .
The Otter's wingspan is 65 feet for crying out loud.The flightless bipedal mammal, that will hunt you down, kill your offspring and try to make you extinct if you hunt it is NOT, repeat NOT, the smartest thing to hunt - not if you're interested in your species' survival ...
Now - we just need to tell this to the rest of humanity.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
1: Feed pigeon massive steroid doses.
2:
3: Big assed bird!!!
4: ???
5: Profit!!!
Is it a plane? Is it SuperMan? No! It's a BIRD!
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
It is probably just a UFO with an outdated disguise database.
Table-ized A.I.
Possibly blown off course by a hurricane.
:)
heh. blown 10000 miles off course? that's one heck of a hurricane.
International Working Groupfor the Steller's Eagle Conservation or "O-Washi-net"
http://fadr.msu.ru/o-washinet/
Tons of info and pictures of the birds. Though I would think that with the pattern the Steller's Eagles have, they would be easily identifiable.
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
Alaska has been playing a little too much Warcraft 3.
--"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams