Pinky Expedition: St. Johns River, Part 2

My search for Pinky continues. But I am becoming convinced from my exploration of the central St. Johns River area that Pinky reports are a probable event of the recent past, and mostly a foggy memory, at best. No current knowledge of these animals or cryptids is contemporarily apparent.

The draft of the river in this area of central Florida is not supportive of ocean life such as dolphins, and other than the manatees that need to find warm springs in the cold season, it seems hard to imagine marine Sea Serpents or alleged living dinosaurs visiting “American’s Nile.”

Reports of bipedal dinosaurs are intriguing, but the sightings from 1950s-1970s feel more and more out-of-character for the area. Still, I am left with the question, why living dinosaur reports here? Why the witness descriptions, one of which compared the animal with a “dragon”?

I have been able to observe, as noted previously, close-up encounters (less than two feet away) with manatees, and one young specimen of raccoon. (By the way, one inquiry of mine regarding the other cryptid hereabouts, the Skunk Ape, was greeted with, “You can find out about them on the Internet.” LOL.)

Long-nose gar are all around too, as well as the “alligator buffets” lining the tree trunks out into the water (the local name for a group of turtles sunning themselves).

Alligators are very visible early in the day, and I’ve seen males and females, with the latter sometimes with a dozen 2007 yearlings. Also, the theory that females chase off their young from previous years is incorrect based on observations of two separate female alligators and their “families.” Both still were guarding hatchlings from 2007, 2006, and 2005. Reptile textbooks have to be revised regarding that common myth.

I saw one great blue heron killing and struggling with a large black snake, although it was difficult to identify what snake species it was, due to the backlighting. One other big snake seen near the boat, with broad red bands that were a little smaller than the areas of black on the body will have to wait for me to look at my snake field guides upon my return to Maine. I heard it called a “broad-banded snake” but that was too general a name for me to link it to a known species.

Birds that I have seen and identified (with second/third/fourth confirmations from my human and field guides) include brown pelican, anhinga, American bittern, great blue heron, great (or common) egret, snowy egret, little blue heron, turkey, tricolored heron (formerly called the Louisiana heron), green heron, yellow-crowned heron, limpkin, pileated woodpecker (no sightings of ivory-billed woodpecker), downy woodpecker, white ibis, wood stock, wood duck, black vulture, turkey vulture, osprey, red-tailed hawk, red-shoulder hawk, American coot, purple gallinule, common moorhen, and boat-tailed grackle. I was lucky enough to also see my first sandhill cranes in the wild (often said to be the source of the Mothman reports) but they have not been at the St. Johns River, but seen feeding along canals and smaller waterways.

I guess all my visuals of dinosaurs on this journey will have to be recalled as ones of the feathered kind.

Loren Coleman 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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