Like everyone else upright and breathing, I have heard all the (mostly fake) tales, seen all the (fake) footprint castings, viewed the (fake) videos, heard recent (real) podcasts, even perused the (fake) “field guides.” I’ve also read large numbers of Sasquatch sightings, and believe that many reporters probably thought they saw something.
It just wasn’t an elusive long-lost subhuman, ape or shape-shifting alien species. Of this I am dead-dog nearly certain.
Can I prove this? Of course not. That’s not my job. But I am happy to be the guy who publicly looks into the glassy eyes of the professional true believers — especially those profiting from the mossy-roofed cottage industry feeding off this remarkably resilient fantasy — and issues a long-overdue ultimatum:
Show me a dead one, and we’ll talk.
SERIOUSLY, FOLKS. This overripe argument about the hairy ape-beast out back has long ago passed its best-by date. And if that question is seen as a put-up-or-shut-up demand, well, it is.
The imaginary Squatch was cute for a while, and any legend that spawns generations of coloring books, postcards, plush stuffed animals and fantastically bad late-night cable TV is harmless in my book — to a point.
In the present era of post-truth, what once qualified as playful mythology increasingly feels like overlooked symptoms of early onset societal nutjobbery, which at some critical-mass level becomes a dangerous thing. So please forgive me for attempting here to point at least one little LED headlamp beam of reason upon the logic-suffocating rot behind the Bigfoot industrial complex.(He pauses to clear throat and pen the requisite qualifiers.)
An underlying premise here is that trying to prove a negative is sheer folly. No one can scientifically prove, for example, that a giraffe has never risen from the depths of Lake Union, marched down Westlake and taken a big dump atop the grassy knoll at Gas Works Park. But a reasonable person can apply her/his own probability mathematics to the question.
Accordingly: It’s impossible to prove that forested areas of the Northwest are not home to stealthy, apelike creatures standing 8 feet tall; weighing up to 800 pounds; constantly emitting putrid, gaseous odors; and prone to issuing earsplitting, guttural, train-whistle screams — yet managing at all times to conceal themselves more effectively than a thimble-sized hummingbird.
It is equally impossible to prove that the Mariners won’t win the 2019 World Series.
Some things, the sane people just know to be true.
As mentioned, the burden of proof here is not on me, or anyone else who finds better things to do than stumble around in the dark in the soggy hills of the Gifford Pinchot National Forest wearing night-vision goggles and carrying an AR-15.
All that’s on Team Squatch. And to that organization, I reissue the plea:
Please, oh please, just show me a dead one.
by Ron Judd, Seattle Times | Read more:
Image: via
[ed. Maybe he just moved somewhere else?]
