Heinz Giant Water Snake

Father Victor Heinz, while going about the Lord's work in South America, saw what he thought was a water snake very much larger than Fawcett's anaconda. The priest, who happened to be a close friend of Lorenz Hagenbeck, a famous German animal dealer and zoo director, reported:

During the great floods of 1922, on May 22 at about 3 o'clock ... I was being taken home by canoe on the Amazon from Obidos [Brazil]; suddenly I noticed something surprising in midstream. I distinctly recognised a giant water-snake at a distance of some 30 yards. .. .

Coiled up in two rings the monster drifted quietly and gently downstream. My quaking crew had stopped paddling. Thunderstruck, we all stared at the frightful beast. I reckoned that its body was as thick as an oil-drum and that its visible length was some 80 feet. When we were far enough away and my boatmen dared to speak again they said that the monster would have crushed us like a box of matches if it had not previously consumed several large capybaras [giant rodents).

(Bernard Heuvelmans, On the Track of Unknown Animals , pp.292-94)