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It Came From The DesertBy Leo BanksMONSTERS ARE FOR all time, not just our time. You think the Old West had its share of beasts and gargoyles? Bet on it. True story: It's 1890 in Tombstone and two cowboys come up with a story bigger than Wyatt Earp's Colt: A winged monster has touched down on the desert between the Whetstone and Huachuca Mountains. It has a long tail and resembles an immense alligator. "The creature was evidently greatly exhausted by a long flight," reported the Tombstone Epitaph, "and when discovered was able to fly but a short distance at a time." The cowboys drew their Winchesters and chased the beast, wounding it. "The creature turned on the men, but owing to its exhausted condition they were able to keep out of its way, and after a few well-directed shots, the monster partly rolled over and remained motionless." The beast was dead. Long live the beast. It measured 92 feet in length. The head was eight feet long and the jaws thickly set with fine, sharp teeth. Its eyes were as large as dinner plates. Each wing measured 78 feet and was composed of a thick, nearly transparent membrane. The cowboys cut off a small portion of one wing and took it home with them. The Epitaph again: "Late last night one of the men arrived in this city for supplies and to make the necessary preparations to skin the creature, then the hide will be sent east for examination by the eminent scientists of the day. "The finder returned early this morning accompanied by several prominent men who will endeavor to bring the strange creature to this city before it is mutilated." But when they returned, the great serpent had vanished. Two years earlier, in November of 1888, W.J. Burner was passing through Miller Canyon, also in the Huachucas, when he spotted a six-foot-long, reddish-brown animal the likes of which he had never seen. It had the head of a fox, the neck of a deer, the body of a dog, and a long bushy tail resembling a Newfoundland's. It reportedly showed no fear, but Bruner sure did. He later learned that Mexican woodcutters had seen the same creature. Isolated fancies, you say? Tales from the Frontier? Hardly. Such bizarre stories continue into this century. On Oct. 7, 1926, three massive teeth were unearthed in a dry lake near Quitobaquito, on the Tohono O'Odham Reservation. Some considered it proof of a Papago legend about a monster that once inhabited the lake. The teeth were indeed monstrous--4 inches thick, 12 inches wide and 14 inches long. Five years earlier, a miner working near Redington stumbled upon a burial ground of a race of giants. August Ealey swore up and down about what he'd found--a skull twice the normal size, and arm bones twice the normal length. He estimated the height of the skeleton at 12 to 15 feet.
Oh, yes. Monsters were out there then, and are out there still.
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