Great report! I thought the giant squid died when it ate that guide's boat?
My wife I have a great squawking heron story (I think the thread is morphing). We are both originally from the hills, my wife from Southwest IL and I'm from Missouri but we both live in the flatlands of Central IL but hit MO as much as possible - Taney being one of our favorite destinations. On this trip we were at Bennett and had just read an article about a young male mountain lion being hit on the hiway in MO and we had discussed it all the way down on the trip. We set up camp and went to sleep.
At about 4 in the morning we heard a terrible noise that had us both sitting upright looking at each other. We were in a tent and the only thing we each thought was "MOUNTAIN LION KILLS CENTRAL IL COUPLE" with all of the accompanying quotes from neighbors & friends, "They were such a nice couple". We didn't sleep the rest of the morning, kept looking for eyes in the woods! The next night was a fitful nite's sleep but we didn't hear the noise so we thought maybe some other camper had the misfortune to run into he mountain lion or MoMo or whatever.
Later that week we headed down to Taney for some more fishing and were out on the stream at about 6:30 in the fog when all of the sudden the same sound that woke us up @ Bennett was just a few feet behind us! We both whipped around (my wife almost took my head off with her fly rod) & there were herons fighting on the bank. After the connection was made in our head that we had stayed awake all night being afraid of some herons, we stood in the water and laughed. Not too many people were around but I'm sure they were wondering what was wrong with that odd couple standing in the water.
