Bigfoot

When I was a wee thing only knee high to a grasshopper I believed all sorts of things, like when a tooth fell out a mysterious entity would put money under my pillow. I later learned that it was actually my mother doing some bedtime sleight of hand rather than allowing a stranger into her child's bedroom to take his tooth from under his pillow. This took the edge of losing teeth. Sadly, I would go on to lose far more teeth than the alloted "baby tooth" sum and there was no money under the pillow for those, but that is another story.

Recently Bigfoot has died, both literally and figuratively. Two lads from Georgia found his sad carcass in the woods then dragged the several hundred kilogram creature for several stinky hours back home to stuff the well over six foot creature into a freezer where it has stayed for several months. At least that is what they told the Tee Vee people. Turns out all they did was fill a wookie costume with roadkill and the whole joke just got out of hand. An overzealous "bigfoot hunter" who was himself notorious for scamming the true believers, called a press conference and used it to promote his website. 

I am surprised anyone was taken in by this photo. The intestines are located behind several thick layers of yeti fur, skin and fat, but here they are just sitting on the top with no cavity opening apparent. Another give away was the tongue. Rodents eat the eyes, the tongue and usually will core out the anus of a dead animal because those are the soft parts of the body. No tough skin to get through. The eyes, apparently eaten, but the tongue left alone, just dangling there. Lastly, the surest way to know if you are dealing with a hoax? They call a press conference. Not that Georgia doesn't have some fine universities or biologists or even a morgue that specializes in the proper storage and inspection of a body... Let's keep it in a freezer instead and call Fox News.

I didn't believe it, but I wanted it to be true. Lights in the sky were gods once, then briefly they were zeppelin's finally settling into the crafts of little green men. I no longer believe in the little green men or the gods, now I have to add bigfoot to that list. It felt good to know a huge peaceful man/ape cousin was out there living in the spaces between. High on the mountain or in the deepest darkest wood slipping by unnoticed. Sure, the evidence was poor, grainy video or unfocused kodaks, all of which amounting to nothing but it was fun to believe.

Now Bigfoot is dead. Killed by two hicks with a fucked up sense humor and too much time on their hands. Our culture has sustained yet another blow to its collective imagination so that a con man can get a few more hits to his website. It sold a lot of papers, but at what cost? What will we dream about now?

Rest in Peace Sasquatch, we hardly knew ye...