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NocturnalSea — Sinkhole Sam-- Kansas Cryptid
#amphibian #cryptid #kansas #monster #siren #worm
Published: 2015-02-11 07:57:31 +0000 UTC; Views: 2105; Favourites: 53; Downloads: 7
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Description
Would you believe Kansas, of all places, has its very own lake monster? Sinkhole Sam is a 15 foot, serpentine creature said to be as round as a car tire. Though no one knows exactly what it is, I've imagine Sam as a gigantic caecilian.Go here to read more:
statecryptids.blogspot.com/
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Comments: 17
For a second I thought it was just a really weird annelid. Looks great though!
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I would love to know more about those. I initially had a hard time finding information about cryptids in several states-- including Kansas-- that weren't just Bigfoots (bigfeet?)
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Although we're more well known for airplanes today, we used to be a society of hardy farmers and frontiersmen. One of the biggest threats to our existence was massive locust swarms, as you can imagine. Those locusts are extinct today, thanks in part to the development of pesticides and the Dust Bowl, but we developed a lot of stories around them: to us the grasshopper was like a boogeyman. They would come in swarms that were miles upon miles across--probably visible from space if there had been anybody up there at the time--that would block out the sun for days at a time. Sounds like an exaggeration, I know, but there was a lot of truth in such radical descriptions. Lots of folk tales these pioneers told were about grasshoppers, and over time they were portrayed as more and more monstrous. My great grandma used to tell me the version of Jack and the Beanstalk she was told as a kid in which Jack trades his family's cow for a bag full of magic corn. The corn grows and grows and grows until it reaches into the sky, and Jack attempts to climb it for some reason I can't remember anymore. He makes no progress because it grows faster than he can climb, and he ends up stuck in the sky until a swarm of giant grasshoppers comes and eats the stalk, knocking it over and bringing him back safely to the ground. During the era known as Bleeding Kansas which preceded the American Civil War groups of pro-slavery raiders from Missouri known as Border Ruffians would come over the border and force Kansans to vote for slavery at gun point, and often times they were described as riding in on giant grasshoppers to make them appear more villainous (well, more villainous that they already were, that's actually a really cool bit of history to read about if you don't know anything about it: the Wakarusa War and wider Kansas-Missouri Border War, John Brown, fighting between an illegally elected pro-slavery territorial government and abolitionist shadow government, etc). We also have a lot of stories about some guy called Pecos Bill who was a cowboy that used a rattlesnake as a lasso, rode a giant grasshopper (though lots of other stories say it was a mountain lion), and once tried to ride a tornado and was flung so hard he crashed through the Rockies (creating Donner Pass) and skidded across the desert, creating the Grand Canyon. They don't get told much at all anymore, but it's another example of the giant grasshopper. I don't think anybody actually believed they existed, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few that doubted that they didn't. We claim to have more ghosts than cryptids, sadly.
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Wow! Awesome. Thanks for all the information. That's really neat. I'll have to look up the Wakarusa and Kansas-Missouri Border War.
Also, I was planning on doing another series of drawings on "fearsome critters" from American folklore like the Hodag and the Slide-rock Bolter-- plus folklore characters like Pecos Bill, John Henry, Paul Bunyan, etc. So even if the giant grasshoppers wouldn't technically count as cryptids, I would definitely love to put them in a folklore series.
Thanks again!
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Glad I could help, I look forward to seeing the folklore drawings!
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What a cute creature, with an appropriately cute name!
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Caecilians are pretty adorable. They have a goofy small and a simple, sock-puppet head that looks even more silly and cute when they open their mouth.
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this has got to be the quirkiest one yet :'D I'm loving this series!
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aren't those the snake-like amphibian things?
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if it is one... sam must be a previously unknown giant species. if it exists at all.
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Yeah, unfortunately, Sam is most likely just a legend and misidentification. But I love the folklore.
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