Report 594: a sighting by a group of boys along a canal, a mile or so north of South New River.

Forgive me for not knowing the exact year. It was around 1980 or 1981. My brother, I and a friend were hiking in an old cow pasture that was very overgrown. Back around 1980, Davie still had lots of woods and overgrown orange groves. Sure, I had heard of the skunk ape, but was never concerned. Being a boy, I was adventurous. Anyways, we were in the pasture hiking when we found an old tractor trailer. The trailers doors were missing, the were off and lying rotten on the ground, (with trees growing in them). We noticed that the trailer smelled real bad. We decided to climb in and look around. All we found was stench, like an animal lived in there. We were too far from the road for a bum to wander in and there wasn't any sign that anyone "kept the place up". We lost interest in the trailer and started to hike some more. We came upon a canal that forked with another one. To make a long story shorter, I saw something looking at us from across the canal. We were still about fifty yards from the edge of the canal at this point. Whatever it was didn't take notice of us right away, but as we got closer it looked up and raised its "arms" above its head as if it was waving at us. This area was very overgrown and all of my previous trips, I had not seen anyone out there. Whatever this was scared us all so bad, we ran all the way home, locked the doors and didn't return to the area until a few years later! My brother, now, says that we were imagining it. I have thought that it was a snake bird (you know, the ones that sit on a post and spread their wings to dry). However, I keep replaying the incident in my mind and I don't see a snake bird. There was a humanoid head and the colors were all wrong. Snake birds are usually blackish..what I saw was more brown...