American Lament

For a time, at least, alarmingly significant portions of the North American population thought that they had found him. Bigfoot, the elusive creature of which folklore and major motion pictures starring John Lithgow are made, was captured. Captured, of course, in the way all Bigfoot sightings are—in the sense of “We may or may not have found an animal of indeterminate origin that we’re not going to show you any of the evidence for.”

This time, of course, they thought they had found him. “They,” of course, being the sort of people to call a press conference before the conclusive DNA results have actually come back yet, so sure of their find. The story was even picked up by the major news outlets, something I assumed was devoted solely to the items that Lindsay Lohan regards as acceptable things to enter into or exit out of her hoo-ha or the occasional report as to what Obama pooped out after eating a McGriddle. But there it was, amongst sordid tales of subprime reform and protests in Beijing: Some Fringe Nutjob Thinks He Might Have Found Bigfoot.

Well, not exactly. The report, no doubt currently wrapped in a manila envelope being mailed to the Pulitzer committee, featured a rather disturbing photo of what appeared to be a Bigfoot carcass. It wasn’t Bigfoot kicking up some mold spores in a big hairy cage tied up by leather straps in some dude’s basement, or Bigfoot eating Froot Loops while sitting on a tree stump trying to do the Jumble. It was a post-Sasquatch. He looked like he was crumpled up in an abandoned meat locker, a shameful burial and no doubt a nightmare to the olfactories. It basically looked liked a hollowed-out monkey suit had been dumped into a malfunctioning refrigerator with the door tore off.

Of course, there’s a pretty good chance that it was, in fact, a picture of a hollowed-out monkey suit that had been dumped into a malfunctioning refrigerator with the door tore off. The DNA evidence, once the results came back, identified it as human or opossum. Of course, the counter claim was that these were obviously part of the stomach contents of Bigfoot, a known opossum connoisseur, but one doubts exactly how much further they are going to go with this.

The story, of course, is otherwise light on details and full of rampant skepticism. The body of a 500-pound suspected Bigfoot was “stumbled upon” by two individuals while hiking, who, oh, by the way, just happen to immediately contact someone who have previously detailed Bigfoot discoveries in the past. That’s about as believable as the cat who lovingly purrs up against you after you find out that someone just took a dump in your bathtub while you were out.

Bigfoot sightings are exactly the sort of thing that happen with unfortunate regularity, but not rare enough that it still shows up on the Odd News column. They go way back to the late 1800’s, when those still searching for the frontier would often report sightings of strange animals to journalists hungry for a story that didn’t involve railroad combinations or inkwell trusts. Most of these were converted into sensationalistic mockeries of modern journalistic standards except, of course, for the Sasquatch Preservation Society newsletter and the New York Post.

Out of all of this, the most amusing aspect of this Bigfoot story is the fact that a reporter for the Scientific American, no doubt looking longingly back at his four-year college degree in journalism, had to actually type out the phrase indicating that the individuals who made the claim “made an announcement on a bigfoot enthusiast radio program.” A bigfoot enthusiast radio program, eh? Someone in Riyadh just put another note in their file.

I don’t quite get the allure of Bigfoot. I mean, there is a certain attraction to many creatures in the cryptzoology menagerie; the scaly, dragonesque dread of the Loch Ness Monster, perhaps, or the eerily terrifying hoop snake, or maybe the tauntingly alluring mermaid. But Bigfoot? He’s basically just an ape, only bigger. He doesn’t have any special powers and didn’t come into being via any generally accepted birth of legend, except perhaps the divine experience of ingesting peyote by our Native American ancestors. He basically lumbers around and waves off cameras like the Amish, leaving big, suspiciously asymmetrical footprints and a disappointing taste of locale.

It’s somewhat perplexing exactly why individuals make wild, easily disproven claims such as this Bigfoot find. On some level, no doubt, there’s a certain amount of self-delusion involved, the exact sort of thing that fuels the initiative of American Idol contestants, Division IV rugby enthusiasts, and House Republicans. But it certainly can’t be the entire thing. As with nearly all human endeavors, the chance that someone, at some point, is going to stop someone and say, “Hey. Maybe this is kind of a stupid idea.” It doesn’t always happen—witness New Coke, the Golden Compass, and the inexplicable success of John Mayer—but more often than not batshit craziness tends to be self-regulating. At least, that the sort of thing that lets me get to sleep at night.