DALE DRINNON: Churchward's "Quetzalcoatl Flying Serpent"

The Lost Continent of Mu series of books contain at least one report of what seems to have been an unknown animal. The author, James Churchward, claims to have seen a venomous flying snake in the Central American jungles, according to L. Sprague de Camp in Lost Continents. The actual wording in Children of Mu is much more elliptical and gives the impression that Churcward is dodging responsibility for having seen such a thing. This would have been published in the 1930s and referring back to an earlier event.

According to the given account, this 'Quetzalcoatl' was a flying snake with a body the size of a duck, a long serpentine neck four or five feet long, a snake-like head and feathered wings. It was black and dark grey, thickly spotted with white in parts. According to the story one of the Quetzalcoatls bit a native in the party and he died almost instantly. The creature was shot and examined but admittedly it was not in good condition after it had been shot and killed. It seems that both the tail-feathers and the beak were removed by the shots fired at it.

Churchward's description is not really very far off although he seems to have reported the whole length as the neck length. The animal that had been killed was evidently an Anhinga, a known bird that does match the description very well except for the battle damage mentioned. That leaves only the matter of the 'Flying Serpent's' alleged venomous bite, which is legendary but not a real feature of the bird. The poor man must have simply died of fright, since there was no venom in the bite.

This version of the 'Flying serpent' is actually also demonstrable in Mexican folklore and said to raid livestock. That tradition would also be based on sightings of anhingas. Anhingas are also 'Flying Watersnakes' reported in Africa from time to time, and Oudemans speaks of one sighting in his book on The Great Sea Serpent (identifying it by the obsolete genus name of Plotus)

Churchward spoke of this in more than one place but the better version is in Sacred Symbols of Mu, pages 150-151; I just checked. That would be the passage to cite. The passage begins in his italics, 'Is Quetzalcoatl a mythical serpent, No, it is not' and it contiues:

'Quetzalcoatl is a feathered flying serpent and the most venomous ever recorded:for within two minutes, and apparently almost suddenly, the victim falls to the ground dead after being struck. The reptile is of a very peculiar shape, having a body about the size of a duck or a small goose. The real serpent part of it is its head and neck, which in the one I refer to extended about five feet from the body. The head is broad and V-shaped, like most of our known venomous serpents [in another passage the eye is described as being like a snake's eye] Apparently it had no snakelike tail but in its place a tuft of feathers. From the head to the body the neck is covered with short hair-like feathers. The general color of the neck and body is almost white thickly mottled with grey [Dark grey mottled with white would be more accurate]; the upper wing feathers are very long and droop like the [feathers on a] bird of paradise. These have a prismatic sheen [Actually, should have said 'Black with a prismatic sheen', all true enough] Their flight is very clumsy, and then they can only fly a short distance, a few yards. Apparently they have great difficulty in settling on the branch of a tree. A softnosed bullet from a 30-30 so mashed and cut the one referred to that it was difficult to describe it accurately. The meeting of this reptile resulted in a triple tragedy. The Indians would go no further and so the explorer returned'

Once again it is unclear from the retelling whether or not Churchward was present at the time, although in other accounts it seems he shot the bird himself. Churchward was known to tell stretchers but in this case the description is clear enough: if all he had described were the short greyish feathers on the snakelike neck and the longer, drooping, darker and 'Prismatic' feathers on the wings, we would already have the exact identification.