Florida’s Bigfoot: The Legend of the Skunk Ape
The Skunk Ape in the heart of the Everglades. Art by the author
Dave Shealy lights a Marlboro. He takes a long drag before tossing a small rock over a chain link fence. A 10-foot gator emerges from the murky waters of a muddy hole on the other side of the fence. The prehistoric predator almost grins, happy to see Dave. “C’mon, come out here grumpy,” Dave barks encouragingly at the gator as it examines the rock with its snout, annoyed that it is not a chicken carcass.
Dave looks to be in his late fifties, with a shaved head and a thin white beard. His skin is tanned leather cured from decades under the Florida sun; it cracks and wrinkles around his neck and eyes. Dave is showing me his reptile collection. It is an eclectic mix: in addition to four fully grown gators, he has a batch of baby alligators in a tank, along with an impressive collection of snakes, including several Burmese pythons. But it is not snakes or alligators that Dave Shealy is known for. His name is synonymous with one thing: the Skunk Ape.
We step away from the alligator and Dave leans against a wooden shed. It’s nice out here, I think, as a mosquito bites the back of my neck. The thought quickly disappears as I swat at two more mosquitoes. Our time is limited, and the conditions are hostile, so I ask Dave what the Skunk Ape means to him. He pauses to take another drag off his cigarette and says one word: “Everything.”
Dave Shealy holding an alleged footprint of the Skunk Ape. Photos courtesy of Dave Shealy
Across the Earth, every culture has stories and legends of cryptids. Those mysterious, mythical beasts that exist in the ether; not quite animal and not yet human. From the Loch Ness Monster to the New Jersey Devil to the fierce Chupacabra, these creatures take many shapes and sizes. One cryptid, however, reigns supreme in popular imagination: Bigfoot. Also known as Sasquatch or Yeti, its range stretches from the Himalayas to the forests of the Pacific Northwest. Deep in the swamps of Florida, however, roams Bigfoot’s smaller and lesser-known cousin: the Skunk Ape.
“The biggest difference is it has four toes instead of five,” Dave says as he shows me a plaster cast of an alleged Skunk Ape footprint. “The people in the Bigfoot community have just now started to accept this”—though Dave is still a little bitter that the Florida Bigfoot Convention failed to send him an invitation for their conference in Orlando. The Skunk Ape is also smaller than its cousin, standing 7-8 feet tall and weighing over 300 pounds. Its fur has a reddish tint, and it is known for its foul odor: a mix of sulfur and rotten eggs. Unlike Bigfoot, the Skunk Ape is known to climb trees to avoid the waters of the Florida swamps. Whispers of the beast date back centuries, to the early Seminole and Miccosukee tribes through to the colonial Spanish. The first American sighting on record was in 1823, when a midshipman named David Porter reported:
“I could see it was larger than a bear and yet clearly not a man but not unlike a large ape. When the shot fired off, the creature seemed to duck before turning and disappearing into the trees…and then, in the moments that followed, a powerful odor washed over our gathering as if a great skunk had sprayed us with its disapproval.”
Since then, numerous sightings have followed this pattern, Dave explains. The creature is observed, almost like a bear, before it raises to stand on two legs, revealing its humanlike stature before disappearing into a cloud of foul odor.
A purported photograph of the Skunk Ape taken by Dave Shealy.
“I am the expert,” Dave says. “I’ve spent tens of thousands of hours out here in the swamp, in the Everglades.” And I believe it. Dave’s family first settled in the Everglades in 1891 on the island of Chokoloskee. His father was the fire chief for the area. There were four firefighters total, says Dave, and they handled the terrain with care and attention. This was when things were different. Before the Government arrived. Now, Dave’s property lies smack in the middle of Big Cypress National Preserve, and Dave is one of the lone holdouts of a town called Ochopee which no longer officially exists.
Big Cypress was the first National Preserve in this nation’s history. It covers nearly a million acres of swamp—an area larger than the state of Rhode Island. Most of Ochopee’s townsfolk left after the Federal Government bought up the land to create Big Cypress. All that remains now of Ochopee is the world’s smallest post office—seriously—and Dave’s Skunk Ape Research Headquarters & Campground. Even though Dave held onto his property, he faced the daunting challenge of operating an independent campground surrounded by a National Park where camping is encouraged, often for free. To survive, Dave hedged his bets on the animal he had claimed to see as a child and pivoted his business model entirely around the Skunk Ape.
Dave Shealy at his Skunk Ape headquarters.
The gamble paid off. There is something alluring about this hominid beast, half-man half-ape, that wanders the wilderness free of all societal constraints. Devoid of any bills, traffic lights, grocery stores, Zoom meetings, or email marketing. While humans worship themselves as masters of the planet, perhaps the legend of Bigfoot is a communal yearning—a nagging voice in the back of our collective heads. A mental fossil from the Mesolithic era when humans were free to roam as they pleased, sleeping under the night stars.
Despite this symbolic, sentimental connection, there are still plenty of proponents for the existence of real flesh-and-blood cryptids. The pelican, the giant squid, and the Komodo dragon were all considered, at one point, to be legends. There remains a slight sliver of hope that we have not yet discovered every megafauna that roams the Earth. A great ape, an ancient relative, hiding from the prying eyes of humankind remains a possibility.
I first learned about the Skunk Ape as a student in Sarasota High School. 10 miles east of Sarasota is Myakka State Park—37,000 acres of swamp and sawgrass surrounding the banks of Myakka River. The park is home to a sizable population of wildlife including American alligators, migratory birds, wild pigs, giant insects, and perhaps its own small family of Skunk Apes.
In the early 2000s, as condos and housing developments began encroaching on Myakka State Park territory, two photographs of what appear to be the Skunk Ape were sent anonymously to the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, along with a handwritten note. The images show what appears to be an orangutan on bath salts lurking among the palmettos. In the note, a concerned homeowner wrote: “Enclosed please find some pictures I took. My husband thinks it is an orangutan. Is someone missing an orangutan? ...Why haven’t people been told that an animal this size is loose? Please look after this situation. I don’t want my backyard to turn into someone else’s circus.” They also noted: “It had an awful smell that lasted well after it had left my yard.”
These mysterious photographs were my first exposure to the elusive monster. I have been hooked ever since, spending nights of my youth stomping around in the swamps near Myakka with apples for bait. But despite my efforts, I have yet to see or smell the beast.
Dave claims to have seen the Skunk Ape three times. The first when he was ten years old and playing with his brother near the family property; he had to jump up on his brother’s shoulders to catch a glimpse. The second time, he was out looking for it. After days spent stalking in a tree, he saw the creature briefly before it disappeared. The third time, Dave captured the incident on video.
In typical cryptid fashion—reminiscent of the infamous Patterson-Gimlin footage of Bigfoot—Dave’s video of the Skunk Ape is grainy and the camera work is unsteady at best, as if Dave had downed nine cups of black coffee that morning before filming on his flip phone. Nevertheless, Dave’s video appears to capture the Skunk Ape in all its glory as it wades through a sea of sawgrass.
Anyone familiar with the terrain of this area will tell you that it is not easy for a human to navigate that quickly through the swamp. But skeptics point out that the figure in the video moves much like a human would. Dave’s video went viral with over a quarter of a million views on Youtube and the footage was covered in a feature by the Smithsonian.
As far as Dave is concerned, his video is absolute proof. “Some panel of experts, with a woman in high heels and some guy in a suit and loafers, sitting around in a TV studio in California, telling me that my footage is too grainy or my evidence isn’t conclusive—it just makes me so angry,” Dave tells me as he lights up another cigarette. “I’ve spent more time out here in these woods than almost anyone else. I see people on TV talking about the Everglades and I’ve never seen them down here before. I’ve proven it is real. I have hundreds of footprints and I have video.”
The Florida State Legislature once thought the Skunk Ape was real too. In 1978, Representative Hugh Nuckolls went so far as to introduce a bill making it a misdemeanor of the first degree for “any person taking, possessing, harming, or molesting any anthropoid or humanoid animal which is native to Florida, popularly known as the Skunk Ape.” This act of legislation was debated on the floor of the Florida House of Representatives in Tallahassee. One Representative of that esteemed chamber is on record as stating: “Of course the problem is that this beast—if in fact it exists—is in danger of over-publication by the press and people searching for it, and I am afraid it will go the way of the ivory woodpecker if we don’t do something to protect it.”
Despite the popular sentiment, the bill did not pass, but the extinction of the Skunk Ape is still a concern. With a shrinking habitat and encroaching predators, I asked Dave how many Skunk Apes remain in the wild. “About five to seven, maybe two to three more in Myakka.” A very small number. How does a population that size maintains its numbers without inbreeding? Maybe Skunk Apes never die. “The old Chief of the Seminole tribe told me that when you saw one it was a spirit,” Dave murmurs. “But I’ve still seen things out in the swamp you wouldn’t believe. Spirits and shadows. The Everglades is an ancient place, a secretive place.”
Every time I visit Florida, the place of my birth, the urban sprawl grows like a tumor. The battered coastline, once sheltered by dense mangroves, is covered with clear-cut condominiums and high-rise buildings. Still, 30 miles away from the coast in any direction, you’ll find an untamed wilderness bathed in Spanish moss, murky lagoons, and tropical hammocks. This is where Dave Shealy thrives. “I’ll go out tonight, probably. About 5 miles in the pitch dark. Just me and my headlamp. No shoes, in the water up to my knees. I’ve been nibbled at by sharks, bitten by snakes—air evac’d to get antivenom twice. It’s just what I do.”
As Dave says this, I begin to believe I’ve found the Skunk Ape. The man in front of me is a rare breed. What does it matter if there is an enormous smelly primate or not out there in the swamp? Is the Skunk Ape a real animal made of flesh and blood, or is it a figment of our collective unconscious—a shadow of what once was? The answer depends entirely on your perspective. Out here in the Everglades, there is no doubt of its existence.
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Prints of the art for this story can be found on the author’s website.
