• E-Mail
• Print
• Larger
• Smaller

Published: Friday, Dec. 07, 2012 / Updated: Friday, Dec. 07, 2012 06:16 AM

Chasing Bigfoot

Last week, two scientists announced that they have nearly sequenced the DNA of Bigfoot, which means they have supposedly decoded the DNA through actual samples of the legendary creature.

This has left a bunch of people wanting to believe that a gargantuan man-ape exists on the tip of their toes in excitement. Color me less than impressed.

We’ve seen this scenario play out time and again. Somebody comes forward with “definitive proof” that something exists only to have it immediately discredited. Maybe it is a blurry image of an ominous spacecraft that turns out to be somebody’s thumbprint over the lens. Maybe it is an “authentic” carcass of an elusive beast that turns out to be a rubber suit stashed in a plastic cooler.

Not all of these instances are hoaxes; Some are just the work of really shoddy photographers and accidental overnight newsmakers, but there are a lot of reasons to perpetuate hoaxes of these types on the public.

For some reason, most of them are colored green.

Believe it or not (a tagline Ripley cashed in on), there is big business in getting people to seek out legendary people, places and things. A whole cottage industry exists of wilderness “experts” leading trips to find Bigfoot, boating excursions to look for the Loch Ness Monster, and even conventions that encompass all of the unconfirmed mysteries people think are just beyond their reach to expose. Folks pay handsomely to listen to people with made-up titles like “Bigfoot Historian” or “Bigfoot Expedition Leader” detail their face-to-face encounters with nine-foot tall hirsute beings.

You know, I’m not a skeptic, per se. I could get behind the idea that in the ocean deep, there are probably thousands of varieties of marine life yet to be discovered. But, because most of those swimmers are either microscopic or tend to stay miles below the surface of water, they certainly don’t have the draw of a terrifying, hairy creature peering in our living room window at night.

I could believe it if a Yeti lived in the nether regions of the Himalayas or if a red-suited bearded man lived in the Arctic Circle, because they could reasonably go undetected by the public. But when you supposedly have Big Foot running amok in suburbia, you have to wonder how a desperate housewife hasn’t stumbled upon some compelling evidence, let alone an actual Bigfoot Historian. Think of it like this: we’ve uncovered dinosaur bones buried deep in the soil from thousands of years ago, but we’ve yet to find the decaying remains of a several hundred pound giant. We’ve yet to stumble upon a cave, a dwelling, or even Bigfoot droppings in the forests lining a golf course.

I’m fairly certain that even the supposed DNA evidence will end up being a farce.

Zealous Bigfoot followers will just say I’m a blind fool who has fallen victim to the misinformation spread by the vast network of people in on the conspiracy to keep the hairy man-beast hidden. Sort of parallels what other zealous followers say when you question things.

There’s probably even a conspiracy theory on why the word zealous is hidden so deeply in the dictionary.