The Skunk Ape

Florida keeps its own Bigfoot in the Big Cypress swamp: the Skunk Ape, a tall shaggy thing known first by its stench, a smell like rotten eggs and wet dog rolling out of the sawgrass. Sightings run back generations and spiked in the 1970s; there is even a research headquarters out on the Tamiami Trail at Ochopee that will sell you the story. The swamp is real, vast and worth respecting; the ape is the folklore that guards it.