by Kevin Candela
It’s been said that Shakespeare essentially wrote every plot there is, but if so it’s hard finding where he covered the Legend of the Piasa Bird. An absolutely captivating story with a rousing and unforgettable climax, the native saga as known to locals in its simplest form goes as follows: A great winged beast, effectively a flying chimera of human, reptile and bird, terrorizes the Mississippi River in this area (Alton and Godfrey, Illinois, which are positioned on the northern side of that east-west “kink” the river makes just north of its junction with the Missouri River). The natives of this area are being picked off at random by the monster, which takes its victims off somewhere to presumably devour them. If it has a nest or lair of any kind, it’s apparently nowhere near where it does its hunting.
