Looking for Sasquatch

I suppose you’ve read or heard about these two yahoos in Georgia who claim to have found Bigfoot.

It, of course, is turning out to be a hoax. A DNA test on the alleged remains they found were revealed to be from a possum. Either that was one enormous possum, or these guys are full of it. Their evidence is as flimsy as a Britney Spears outfit.

These self-proclaimed Bigfoot trackers are from Clayton County, a lovely part of the south Metro Atlanta area. You know those bumper stickers parents put on their cars saying, “My son is an honor student”? In Clayton County the bumper stickers read, “My son has only been arrested once.”

I have news for you – there is no Bigfoot. It does not exist and is a figment of the imagination, just like other mythical creatures, such as the Loch Ness Monster, the tooth fairy, honest politicians and Georgia Tech football fans.

This reminds me of a joke: An atheist is walking through the woods and he sees Bigfoot, who starts chasing him. He drops to his knees and says “Please God, help me!” God answers him, saying “I thought you didn’t believe in me.” The man says “Well, five minutes ago I didn’t believe in Bigfoot, either!”

Why did these guys have to be from Georgia? Whenever I see anybody from Georgia being interviewed on a television news show, it always makes me cringe. Especially after tornadoes. I believe the TV crews intentionally seek out the least attractive shirtless person they can find with the fewest teeth, and the interview generally sounds like this:

“Well me and Juanita was setting in the den watching the monster truck show on the VCR – my cousin Shorty taped it fer me – and we heared this awful roar like a freight train coming so I yelled to Juanita ‘we got to get to the basement’ and she yelled back that the trailer ain’t got no basement and she wasn’t going nowhere without Thor, which is her little Chihuahua, then the next thang I know the trailer begun to shake and I woke up in a sycamore tree across the road. I ain’t seen Juanita since but Thor turned up at my neighbor’s house and I reckon he’s gonna take up there since all we got left is a ce-ment slab.”

I remember back in 1973, there was an alleged UFO incident in Orchard Hill, Ga., just a few miles from my hometown of Griffin. An old man was sitting on his front porch when he claimed a “golden ball” descended from the sky and burned a spot in his yard about the size of a basketball. The old man claimed it was brimstone from heaven sent down to warn us to stop our wicked ways.

I’m not sure why God would pick Orchard Hill as a place to send a message. There’s nothing there but grain silos and a convenience store. Surely there are more wicked places to drop brimstone, like New York City or Los Angeles or Knoxville.

Believe it or not, the UFO story made the national news. I’m sure it was reported in a patronizing, “Ha-ha, look at these dumb hillbillies” way. I guess it was a welcomed break from all the news about Watergate, which I thought at the time was a big dam. Hey, I was 9. Nobody ever called me a prodigy.

I suppose there is a slight chance that there really is a Bigfoot or UFOs or sea monsters or whatever else people conjure up in their imaginations. I am a skeptic, though, so I’ll believe when I see it with my own two eyes (that’s kind of a dumb phrase – can you see things with somebody else’s eyes?).

Bigfoot, my foot.