July 9, 2008
Early Texas Big Bird Researcher Dies
Ken Gerhard, author of Big Bird! Modern Sightings Of Flying Monsters, sends along word of the death of Guadalupe Cantu III, a historically significant participant in Texas Big Bird matters:
I was very saddened yesterday [July 8, 2008] to learn of the passing of my friend Guadalupe Cantu III recently. Guadalupe first rose to prominence in the classic cryptozoology book, [Creatures of the Other Edge] by Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman [(NY: Warner, 1978; reprinted, NY: Anomalist, 2006], when the authors had discovered the then teenage Cantu investigating Big Bird reports in San Benito, Texas. Years later, I rediscovered him as a grown man, following his own Big Bird sighting during the 1990s. According to Guadalupe, he and his brother-in-law had spotted the man-sized bird perched on a telephone poll near Rangerville, Texas while driving their newspaper route early one morning. Cantu was an integral part of my research in the Valley and appeared with me on local news broadcasts in San Antonio, as well as making an appearance on the Birdzilla episode of “Monster Quest.” He will be dearly missed.
Guadalupe Cantu III is shown in the following video clip, briefly, beginning at the 2:50 mark:
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
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