I'm in a very bird-brained mood today.

So far I've posted about the mysterious bird-like aliens, the Blue Avians, and an original sketch of mine that combined bird features with a dog's body to create a new monster for an RPG:

• The Mystery Of The Blue Avians: Paranormal Steemit
• The "BirdDog": Original Art

And continuing with that theme, I'd like to introduce you to:

The Shoebill Stork

Ok, so first of all: YES. This is a real creature.

It's one of those animals that science has had a hard time classifying, like the duckbill platypus or echidna.

Probably because the Shoebill is actually a dinosaur... but I digress.

It's clearly a bird, but what type of bird? It has a beak more like a pelican than anything, legs like a stork but not a stork, and the voice of an ANGEL! :D

Oh, did I say "angel"? I meant to say -- machine gun.

Do they look scary?

Well, they might at first, until you realize that they can stand as tall as 4.10 feet (152 cm) -- and then you realize they are terrifying!

Here is a Shoebill Stork playing with a Japanese zookeeper before it eats her:

---

And in this video you can watch as one of these vicious monsters attempts to escape it's enclosure and wreak havoc on an unsuspecting crowd of innocent humans:

What do they eat?

Besides people?

Preferred prey species have reportedly included marbled lungfish (Protopterus aethiopicus) and Senegal bichir (Polypterus senegalus) as well as various Tilapia species and catfish, the latter mainly in the genus Clarias. Other prey eaten by this species has included frogs, water snakes, Nile monitors (Varanus niloticus) and baby crocodiles.

wiki
(emphasis mine... because they eat crocodiles)

Direct descendant of dinosaurs

This is probably the closest thing we have to a living dinosaur.

And when you look at it... when you look at that dead-eyed stare of death...

...

shivers

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