Now, now, they’ve cleaned up most of that stuff, it’s in somebody else’s yard now. We eat fish from the Clinch River and there’s hardly any hint of mercury.
Herciniae became extinct in the 16th century. They were a species specific insectivore and preyed on a specific fly that only fed on _Bos primigenius_Aurochs. When Auroch populations crashed in the mid to late 1500s due to over-harvesting by Eastern Europeans, likely Slovaks, there weren’t enough flies to keep the Herciniae alive. This is well documented in the International Cryptid Ecology Journal.