A Texas Size Mystery - Mass Flying Dinosaur Sightings In 1976 - AKA "The Big Bird"
During that year, it seemed like every day, the news would share new sightings of this creature. I remember in the summer, I was so scared to go outside and play, worried that the monster might swoop down to get me or carry me off somewhere. Although my online searches now reveal that most of the sightings were reported near the Texas-Mexico border, I recall hearing stories from all over the state. People described the creature in many different ways—from something that looked like a flying dinosaur to something resembling a dragon with bat-like features or even a gorilla. Those memories still linger with me today.
One of the first encounters was in the early hours of December 26, 1975, when a rancher named Joe Suárez discovered that a goat he had tied up in a corral in Raymondville, Texas (about 30 miles north of the Rio Grande in southeastern Texas), had been ripped to pieces and partially eaten by some unknown assailant. The goat had been mauled from the right side and was lying in a pool of blood with the heart and lungs missing, and the snout bitten away. The blood was still wet and warm when police officers examined the carcass. They could find no footprints around the goat and concluded that a flying creature of unknown origin had caused the death.
On New Year's Day, 1976, two girls near Harlingen watched a large, birdlike creature with a "gorilla-like" face, a bald head, and a short beak. The next day, several three-toed tracks were found in the field where the creature had stood.
Then, on January 14, 1976, at about 10:30 in the evening on the north side of Raymondville, a young man named Armando Grimaldo was sitting in the backyard of his mother-in-law's house when he was attacked by a strange winged creature.
"As I was turning to go look over on the other side of the house," said Armando to the Raymondville press, "I felt something grab me, something with big claws. I looked back, saw it, and started running. I've never been scared of anything before, but this time I really was. That was the scariest I've ever been in my whole life."
This strange flying attacker had dived out of the sky, and it was something Grimaldo described as being about six feet tall with a wingspread he estimated as being from ten to twelve feet. Its skin was blackish-brown, leathery, and featherless. It had huge red eyes. Grimaldo was terrified. He screamed and tried to run, but tripped and fell face-first into the dirt. As he struggled to continue running for his mother-in-law's house, the beast's claws continued to attempt to grasp him securely, tearing his clothes, which were now virtually ripped to shreds. He managedto dive under a bush and the attacking animal, now breathing heavily, flew away into the sky. Grimaldo then crashed into the house, collapsing on the floor, muttering "pájaro" (Spanish for bird) over and over again. He was taken to the hospital, treated for shock and minor wounds, and released.
A short time later, in nearby Brownsville, on the Rio Grande, a similar creature slammed into the mobile home of Alverico Guajardo on the outskirts of town. Alverico went outside his trailer to investigate the crash into his house. When he noticed a large animal next to the crash site, he got into his station wagon and turned on the lights to see it, which he later described as "something from another planet." As soon as the lights hit it, the thing rose up and glared at him with blazing red eyes. Alverico, paralyzed with fear, could only stare back at the creature whose long, batlike wings were wrapped around its shoulders. All the while it was making a "horrible-sounding noise in its throat." Finally, after two or three minutes of staring into the headlights of the station wagon, it backed away to a dirt road a few feet behind it and disappeared in the darkness.
Also in January of 1976, two sisters, Libby and Deany Ford, spotted a huge and strange "big black bird" by a pond near Brownsville. The creature was as tall as they were and had a "face like a bat." They later identified it from a book of prehistoric animals as a pteranodon.
The San Antonio Light newspaper reported on February 26, 1976, that three local school teachers were driving to work on an isolated road to the south of the city on February 24 when they saw an enormous bird sweeping low over cars on the road. It had a wingspan of 15-20 feet and leathery wings. It did not so much fly as glide. They said that it was flying so low that when it swooped over the cars, its shadow covered the entire road. As the three watched this huge flying creature, they saw another flying creature off in the distance circling a herd of cattle. It looked, they thought, like an "oversized seagull." They later scanned encyclopedias at their school, and identified the creature as a pteranodon.
Though reports of flying dinosaurs over Texas reached their pinnacle in 1976, the state has been a 'hot spot' for such sightings since the 1800s. Things quieted down throughout the late 1970s, then unexpectedly there was another rash of sightings again in the early 1980s, followed again by a period of little to no reports. Periodically, reports of flying creatures still surface from time to time in Texas, but never to the extent of the ones that all surfaced in 76.
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