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b"Sign up for our mailing list! We also have t-shirts and mugs with our logo!\\n\\nDon't forget our Kickstarter! I can't believe it reached its funding goal THE FIRST DAY!\\n\\nWe're getting so close to Halloween! This week we'll learn about Mothman! Is it a moth? Is it a ghostly entity from another world? Is it a bird? (hint: it's probably a bird)\\n\\nSandhill cranes (not mothmen):\\n\\n\\n\\nA Canada goose (not mothman):\\n\\n\\n\\nA great bustard (not mothman):\\n\\n\\n\\nA green heron (definitely not mothman but look at those big cute feets and that telescoping neck):\\n\\n \\n\\nA barn owl's eyes reflecting red (photo taken from Frank's Barn Owls and Mourning Doves, which has lots of lovely pictures):\\n\\n\\n\\nBarn owls look like strange little people while standing up straight:\\n\\n \\n\\nBarn owls got legs:\\n\\n \\n\\nAll owls got legs:\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.\\nThis week for monster month, let\\u2019s cover a spooky monster with a silly name, mothman! We\\u2019ll go over the facts as clearly as possible and see if we can figure out what kind of creature mothman might be.\\nFirst, though, a quick reminder that our Kickstarter is still going on if you\\u2019re listening to this before Nov. 5, 2021! There\\u2019s a link in the show notes if you want to go look at it. We actually reached our funding goal on the very first day, so thank you all so much for backing the project, sharing the project on social media, or just putting up with me spamming you about it all month.\\nNow, on to mothman.\\nAs far as anyone can tell, it all started in 1966, specifically November 12, outside of Clendenin, West Virginia, in the eastern United States. Five men were digging a grave in a cemetery outside of town when one of them saw something big fly low across the trees and right over their heads. The witness thought it looked like a man with wings, but with red eyes and an estimated wingspan of 10 feet, or 3 meters. This definitely happened, even though it sounds like the opening scene of a scary movie.\\nThat story didn\\u2019t come to light until after the next sighting hit the newspapers and caused a lot of excitement. The second sighting took place only three days later near Point Pleasant, West Virginia, in the McClintic Wildlife Area. Locals call it the TNT area, since explosives were stored there during WWII. The TNT area is about 70 miles, or over 110 km, away from Clendenin, which has led to a lot of people discounting the gravedigger\\u2019s sighting. We\\u2019ll come back to that later, though.\\nOn Nov. 15, 1966, two young couples decided to go out driving. They were bored and it was a cold, clear Tuesday night. Remember, this was the olden days when there weren\\u2019t as many things to do as there are today. You could watch TV, but only if there was something you wanted to watch on one of the three TV stations available in the United States. If you wanted to watch a movie, you had to go to a movie theater, and so on.\\nAnyway, Steve Mallette and his wife Mary and their friends Roger Scarberry and his wife Linda went out driving that Tuesday night. Toward midnight, as they drove through the TNT area, their car came over a hill and they saw a huge creature in front of them.\\nSome 35 years later, in July 2001, Linda gave an interview to the author of the book I used as my main reference for this episode, called Mothman: The Facts Behind the Legend. She mentioned details that aren\\u2019t in any of the newspaper articles from 1966, or that give a better explanation of what happened than the articles did. There\\u2019s always a possibility that after 35 years, her memory wasn\\u2019t accurate, so I\\u2019m mostly going by the newspaper articles for my information, but she does mention something interesting in that interview.\\nShe says this about the very first sighting of the creature:\\n\\u201cWe had just topped a hill in the TNT area, and when the headlights of our car hit it, it looked directly at us, as if it was scared. It had one of its wings caught in a guide wire near a s..."