he'll always be my beast of burden

From time to time, you may have noticed I mention having a rather strong aversion to Bigfoot. Hell, rather and strong don't even play nicely enough with each other to adequately describe my aversion to this alleged (hog wash!) creature. My fear of what I believe (BELIEVE! ) to be the cruelest (though perhaps most boring) of woodland creatures has been splattered all over my own blog, as well as across the Internet.

I place the blame for my Bigfoot phobia at the feet of Leonard Nimoy and a quasi-creepy little show he hosted titled In Search Of. I had no business watching that show when I was a child. Hell, I should have been outside playing and frolicking with my peers, but no. I was planted in front of the TV, waiting for the theme music to send chills down my spine after Mr. Nimoy would tease me with the potentially frightening subject we'd be tackling, absorbing it all in great big scoops of amazement because I believed every word the experts spilled. Why wouldn't I? Even if they weren't spouting off facts and artifacts, they'd often be wearing big, black nerd frame eyeglasses, so by virtue of that alone, I KNEW they were smarter than me and had to be telling the truth. Why I have no fear of vampires or aliens is beyond me, but the episode devoted to Bigfoot scared the bejesus out of my impressionable nine year old mind, and from that moment on, I have devoted a portion of my nightly routine to peeking out of my bedroom window blinds to assure myself no large, pungent, follically superior beast stood in wait for me.

Think I'm kidding? That street lamp pictured up there? That street lamp stands at the far corner of my backyard, and that street lamp and I are well acquainted. It is my beacon of safety in a confusing world AND I HAVE SEEN THINGS STANDING UNDER IT THAT HAVE SENT CHILLS DOWN MY SPINE!!!

(things that later turned out to be frolicking bunnies, but that is not the point!)

Of course, if you take a gander at that above photo, you could put together a pretty solid case debunking my Bigfoot fears. Let me point out a couple obvious ones:

• A general lack of dense foliage. I live in the suburbs. That small stand of trees in the horizon? While perhaps a feasible home for Mr. B. Foot, Esq., it would hardly fill the void of the densely wooded regions of the Pacific Northwest where he tends to make his home. Because trees get cut down around here faster than the homes that go up in their place, and Bigfoot has been described as a rather slow, lumbering creature, I think even if he left his forest dwellings of Oregon or northern California in 1977, he'd still not be anywhere near me by now. And not just because he may have reached the Nebraska border, gotten hella bored, and turned around.
• Oh, except GAH! Apparently there were numerous Bigfoot encounters near where I grew up and presently live in the late 70s!
• Over the course of history, Bigfoot has most often preferred to make his presence known to men. I could say a lot about that right here, but I think I'll just leave that one alone.
• Bigfoot apparently has a rather distinct odor, and while I often smell odd things around my home, I also live with three others who are of the male persuasion and that in itself guarantees I'll be walking into some vapor clouds of their doing (although they will also attempt to blame said odors on each other or other things...like Bigfoot...because they like to keep me freaked out).
• His name is Bigfoot. Bigfoot. Say it a few times. Not exactly scary, is it? Ooooh! What are you going to do to me, Bigfoot? Kick me in the groin with your giant feet? Shove a giant toe in my nostrils to cut off my airflow? Yeah. Not particularly scary.

Hmmm...I guess I only have a few points. Not much of a case, really. Feel free to add your own, I suppose. Start with this little tidbit I found the other day while straightening up at the bookstore:

From the book Bigfoot: I Not Dead by Graham Roumieu. A humorous little tome meant to give us a chuckle or a frightening manifesto directed right at me. Oh, I think the above pages really, really speak volumes, my friends... Dear Lady? Might as well be Dear INSERT MY NAME HERE!

I thought I was going to have my Bigfoot issues laid to rest last summer when a rag tag team of intrepid explorers claimed to have captured a dead Bigfoot. Oh, I remember fondly my glee the morning I fired up my laptop and the Yahoo news site trumpeted the amazing find. I may have even cried and whispered "Free at last, Bigfoot. Free at last from the stranglehold you have placed upon my life!" Maybe. My intrepid friend, weird girl, staged a most excellent moment in investigative journalism to attend the press conference said explorers held to present their DNA evidence. As we all know (at least those of us among the we who care about these things AND I DO!), that evidence was later debunked (SHOCKING!), and so my fears? They remain. Deep within me. Like Bigfoot deep within his foresty lair.

And so we come to the end of this post, which ultimately was about nothing because I haven't posted anything for nearly a week and figured it was about time. You could, I suppose, say this was a post about Jack Squat.

I, however, like to think it was a post about Sas (wait for it...) quatch!