What About Dragons?

[BIAD]

...I tend to think of them as an American version of the Great Orm...

And that in itself, is a fascinating situation.

It would be nice-and-neat to offer the idea that European tales were dragged across the Atlantic
and re-massaged into new 'beastie'' warning-stories. The wisdom of caution and the excitement
of dealing with a monster would guarantee the tale would endure for the young to learn to beware.

But the Uktena isn't one of ours...! the legend was already there!
So is this just a coincidental alignment of imagination of a creature that holds all of the primeval
fears of our ancestors (snake-like, big teeth and animal cunning)... or is it that such monsters really
did roam this planet and now are far-and-few between?

Mainstream science boasts that the monsters have all gone and things like the Komodo Dragon and
Megamouth sharks are just anomalies. The great worms of the Dark Ages were slain by European
knights and the New World's only killers were the feathered savages of the plains and the occasional
wolf.

At this point, I always use the account of the biologist, Patrick Russ who was hired by the Michigan
Department of Natural Resources to disprove that mountain lions were roaming Michigan's upper
-peninsula.

In 2000, he spent two days looking for sign to prove that hunters were wrong in their reporting of
the large cat and collecting his $5000, he assured the DNR that mountain lions didn't exist in that
part of Michigan. A belief they held until 2008, when the body of one of these beasts was brought in
as proof.

We don't know enough of this reality and how it works.
Orms, Uketnas, Champ and Nessie, there's something that isn't making sense with what we're told
to accept as 'normal'.