SOURCE: "Aepyornis Island" (Pall Mall Budget, December 27, 1894 ) by H. G. Wells

DESCRIPTION: "It was about the end of the second year our little paradise went wrong. Friday was then about fourteen feet high to the bill of him, with a big, broad head like the end of a pickaxe, and two huge brown eyes with yellow rims, set together like a man's--not out of sight of each other like a hen's. His plumage was fine--none of the half-mourning style of your ostrich--more like a cassowary as far as colour and texture go. And then it was he began to cock his comb at me and give himself airs, and show signs of a nasty temper..." ("Aepyornis Island" by H. G. Wells)

NOTES: An orchid hunter named Butcher finds an egg in Madagascar but ends up stranded an atoll with the hatched chick. He names it Friday and raises it to maturity. The species he finds is larger than any found before. It also turns vicious and chases him around the atoll, kicking and smacking him with its ax-beak. In the end he is forced to kill it using a bolo and his knife. Shortly after this he is rescued.

Ray Harryhausen kinda used one in Mysterious Island and 10,000 BC featured some in the tall grass

HISTORY: This story may have been one of the sources for the Axe Beak, a monster in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Edgar Rice Burroughs used a similar creature in his Pellucidar stories called a Dyal. Most recently the film 10,000 BC featured some prehistoric birds of this nature too.

INTERESTING LINK

AD&D Miniature of an Axe beak