Mocking Words: Bigfoot

I've been doing this blog for a while now and I've covered a virtual cornucopia of topics. I can't recall if I've ever gone over a definitely backwoods, probably drunken, definitely hilarious, Bigfoot sighting before. Good thing there's a first time for everything because this is definitely one for the books. God bless the South.

Welcome to Cleveland County in North Carolina. It is here that we meet a one Tim Peeler. Mr.

Peeler apparently has a penchant for calling coyotes. I don't know why he wants to call coyotes and I certainly don't know how he thinks that he's going to get any coyotes to pay attention to him with his obviously homemade coyote calling device. The thing looks like a coffee can attached to a kazoo and sounds like a duck stuck head first in a tailpipe. It's not a coyote call. Granted, I'm not much for the outdoors, but there are coyotes in the hills behind my walled off compound and the ones that I hear don't sound like ducks. But this is all just an amusing side note. It has nothing to do with what happened after Mr. Peeler and his homemade coyote caller got down to business.

According to the fine folks over there at Channel 36 News and Real Radio 104.1, Mr. Peeler was making the duck noises with his coffee can when, in his own words, "Instead of them...HIM." And then he points off into the distance. Dun-dun-DUNNNNNN!

By "him", Mr. Peeler was referring, of course, to Sasquatch. That's right. Bigfoot himself. He goes on to describe his encounter with whatever it was that he thinks that he saw by explaining, "This thing was ten foot tall." And then, for some reason, it's like he has to catch his breath. He wasn't running a marathon or anything when he was telling the news person this. He was just standing there. But he does make that, um, sort of, uh, backwoods dweller noise at the end of every sentence. It's kind of like a deep sigh, but it has a little touch of "Uhhh" or "Ummm" thrown in. It's almost like he's winded after every sentence. I'm sure I'm not doing it justice with my explanation here, but believe me, you'd know it when you heard it.

As Clem continues with his poetic description, I kind of wonder if he wasn't drawn to this creature in more ways than one. He seems like he's talking about his girlfriend when he says, "He had beautiful hair." Huh. Yeah, that's new. He seems to be rather enamored by...whatever it was that he thinks he saw. Just exactly how much have you had to drink today there, Cletus? You sure that there wasn't any tender lovin' going on before you called 911?

As the story progresses, we get a little shot of Tim's porch. It looks just like you'd expect it to look. It's rustic. It's wooden. It's covered in crap. The only thing that's missing is one of those hillbilly cellos made out of a jug of hooch and a stick. It's Rube Holler. It couldn't be any more hillbilly if it were a Hollywood movie set. Rustic is an understatement. The Beverly Hillbillies pre-oil discovery might be making it sound too nice.

So how did Tim get himself out of the encounter with the alleged

Sasquatch? According to him, "I come like here (deep wheezing breath and long pause) and I roughtalked him (deep wheezing breath and long pause) and run him awf!" (That's "off" with the hillbilly accent. Awf.) But the creature came back (allegedly) and to get rid of him, he apparently picked up a large stick and said, "And I said git away from here! Git! (Stick thrust. Long pause to catch his breath.) Git! (Stick thrust. Long pause to catch his breath.) And he went right back out that path again....(as he points to the "path" and his voice trails off....)"

What do you suppose he is wearing draped over one shoulder there? It looks to be like some sort of a rope, but I can't figure out the purpose of it. It goes from his shoulder all the way down to the opposite hip. Think it has something to do with Bigfoot huntin'? It just might. I've heard of stranger things (though most of them have been in this story).

He finished up his tale with a wistful remembrance of the creature's digits. "He looked like he had six fingers on each hand." This as he sketched a likeness of what he saw. Let's take a gander, shall we? Behold! Um, Sasquatch!

Well, hey! Wait a minute! That's not Sasquatch! That's one of them there Oakridge Boys! Behold!

Mystery solved. Carry on, Cooter.

Sphere: Related Content

One of two things is going on with the fake Bigfoot story. (The Bigfoot is a fake, not the story. The story about the Bigfoot, which is fake, is real. The story, that is? Are you with me? Good. Now, who's on first?) It's either:

I'm missing something, or
People are dumber than I thought.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to guess Number Two there. If I'm wrong and it's really Number One and I'm missing something, the thing that I'm missing is how people got to be so dumb because this whole story is exactly what it turned out to be. Unbelievable.

Just to get you up to speed, here's a brief synopsis: About a week ago, Aug. 14, two guys from Georgia named Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton claimed that they had recovered the body of the oh-so legendary Bigfoot (also known as Sasquatch and, if there's snow and he's white, it's likely The Yeti, Bigfoot's cold and chilly, but equally as elusive, cousin.). They sold they Bigfoot body to a one Tom Biscardi, a self-named Bigfoot hunter and the host of a Bigfoot Internet radio show and the owner of SearchingForBigfoot.com. He forked over $50,000 for the BigBody, thus proving that he was not the owner of BuyerBeware.com or AFoolAndHisMoneyAreSoonParted.com. Imagine his surprise when it turned out that (hold onto yourself. Not that tight!) the creature was actually just a Sasquatch Suit from TheHorrorDome.com. Shocking, I know!

Now, it seems as though Biscardi paid for the Sasquatch sight unseen, which seems a little...oh, what's the word I want? Oh, that's right. It seems a little freakin' stupid. I mean, come on! These guys tell him they have a Bigfoot in a Box and they'll give it to him, but there's a catch! Actually, there's not one catch, but fifty thousand catches! And the guy PAYS them the money! How does someone THAT gullible HAVE fifty grand in the first place? Why isn't this guy broke? How come he's not homeless? Fifty grand is a lot of money to give ON PURPOSE to two guys whom you've never met who are claiming to have secured the corpse of a deceased creature of folklore myth and are willing to sell it to you and only you! People really need to make sure that this guy doesn't find out about eBay, because then he would be broke! "A flying saucer? WITH the aliens still inside?! How much?? Only fifty thousand??! Honey! What's this PayPal thing?? I need to buy a UFO! Quick! Hurry before someone else gets it! There's only ONE left! And don't worry about that Jesus on the Philly cheesesteak sandwich that someone was selling for twenty grand. I scooped that one up before lunch!"

So after the BigFake has been thawed out of it's icy embalming and determined to actually be a fake (it was either the a) hollow spot on the head that was an "ominous sign", b) that both feet were big and rubber, or c) after extracting a sample of hair from the creature/costume, the hair was burned and "melted into a ball uncharacteristic of hair." Yeah, it was most definitely one of those three things.), Tom Biscardi and his team..."immediately went into crisis mode. Biscardi called Whitton and Dyer at their California hotel." That according to the big breasted news announcer women over there at FoxNEWS.com. (So, I guess it shouldn't surprise me that the guy who paid $50,000 for a BigFoot before it had been thawed out and examined is the same kind of guy who considers "crisis mode" to be "making a phone call".) Dyer and Whitton, being the upstanding folks that they are, admitted it was a hoax and they allegedly also agreed "to sign a promissory note at a meeting set for 8 a.m. Pacific time at the hotel." You see where this is going, right? And when Biscardi got there,"....he "found that they had left." " I can't believe it! They weren't there?!! UN-believable! I did not see that coming.

It took a few days for Rick and Matt to resurface, but they did pop up back in Georgia and they're now claiming that they whole thing was "a joke". Well, no kidding! I think we figured that part out when the BigFoot became the BigFake. Thanks for letting us know that it was just "a joke" and that you weren't as stupid as the guy who paid $50,000 for the frozen costume. (No, that just let's us know that you might be more stupid.) Rick told Joanna Massee of WGCL-TV, "I just wanted to put out some good news. People are upset with the war and stuff — what's so bad about Bigfoot? Nobody got hurt." Um, wait. What?

So, because people are upset with the "war and stuff", you're going to claim you found a deceased Bigfoot and froze him like a bipedal Popsicle and then sold the BigFake to a dumbass for fifty grand? Because of the "war and stuff"? Dude, we're not real happy about the economy either. What are you going to do about that? Do you have Amelia Earhart in a closet somewhere? The housing market is pretty suck-y also. What say you trot out a leprechaun riding a unicorn to make us feel better about that , too?

You'll be happy to know that someone who offers up an excuse that is that lame has been fired from their job. Dyer was a police officer who was on leave after having been shot while on duty. (Can't work as a cop. CAN go across the country and claim to have found Bigfoot. OK. Whatever.) After hearing that the story was a hoax (hoax = BFL. Big Fat Lie.), he was promptly fired from the Clayton County Police Department. Something about credibility and lying. Something like that. Go figure, eh?

And what did Dyer have to say about his termination? "I don't believe it does affect my credibility at all, because this is Bigfoot. It would be one thing if I came out and said I had something else that is tangible or real, but right now, as far as I'm concerned, there is no real Bigfoot." Wait a minute. What the hell does that mean? That doesn't make any sense at all. Does he know that we know it's fake? Does he know that he knows it's fake? He says "this is Bigfoot" and "there is no real Bigfoot" both in the same sentence! Thus, I think I'm going to have to disagree with him and say that it DOES affect his credibility It definitely affects his sensibility and quite possibly his sanity. But it definitely doesn't make sense.

Of course, as this person is interviewing Rick, do you think that she asked about Tom Biscardi's fifty grand? I mean, if it's just something to get everyone's mind off of the "war and stuff", then I kind of think you should be giving the guy his money back, yes? So where is dude's fifty grand? Well, I don't know, because the piss poor interviewer chick DIDN'T ASK HIM! Boo! Boooooo!

I'm sorry, ma'am, but what the hell? You've got this guy in front of you who you have to know took fifty grand from another moron for a frozen FakeFoot and you don't ask him about the money that he took, but you do let him talk about "the war and stuff"!?!? What exactly were you thinking your report was supposed to accomplish? You didn't even ask the most important question! And you're a reporter? I'm not even sure that you're conscious. Unbelievable.

Biscardi and Company are going to sue. Of course. And maybe they should. I don't know. I mean, if you're stupid enough to fork over $50,000 for something that you've only seen pictures of and haven't checked out in person and the "something" is a mythical creature whose existence has yet to be proven, you might get what you deserve. If you can't do a little better with your money than that, perhaps you shouldn't have any. I don't know that it's other people's responsibility to protect and rescue the stupid. But it might be. We'll see how that works out in court for you, Tom.

But here's what I really don't get. This story was covered by MAJOR media all over the place. They held a press conference, they did interviews, they were out there on the Unconfirmed Creature Circuit for a week. And almost everyone in the media covering this story treated it as if it were totally plausible to expect this to turn out to actually be Bigfoot. It was treated as if these yo-yos had actually found and froze a Sasquatch-cicle as proof that they exist and that the mystery has been solved at last! WHY was it like this? WHERE was the skepticism that usually accompanies stories like this one? And now that it's proven to be a fraud, WHY on earth is everyone SO surprised and disappointed and dejected? WHY are people shocked, actually shocked, that this was a fake?

Look, I understand wanting to believe things that you really, really want to be real. People do it all the time. A lot of times this happens in relationships. Whether it be wanting to believe a good thing (ie, you really, really want to believe that the other person is as into you as you are into them), or not wanting to believe a bad thing (ie, you really, really want to believe that the other person is SO not cheating on you, but they SO are). And I can understand why it would happen in relationships because usually they're fairly meaningful to someone (until you find out that the rat bastard really is cheating and then you're just bitter and alone). But Bigfoot? It must come down to people really, really wanting to be RIGHT after everyone and I mean everyone said they were wrong. They must have this intense, overwhelming need to be right and to be given the chance to say, "Ha, HA! Told you so!" That's the only explanation for it. And that's just sad.

Look, this whole thing could have been over after the first hour if people had just sat down and watched a little Scooby-Doo. Scoob and the gang are always skeptical and they always investigate. They don't just go around believing that the strange going-ons are real. They check them out and find out what's what. And what they always find out is that the "mystery" isn't quite so "mysterious" and that it's just someone pulling your leg. We can learn a lot from Scooby-Doo, and it'll be a hell of a lot more than we learned from that reporter's interview, that's for sure.