Sasquatch Update

As we all know, Sasquatches are reputed to be incredibly strong, shaggy, shy creatures who walk upright like humans, pay no taxes, make weird hooting noises at night and don’t like to have their picture taken. As a result, virtually every picture of a Sasquatch is grainy and indistinct.

Sasquatches have popped up in a number of my posts over the years so given the successful completion of the Artemis II mission and in keeping with the tradition of boldly going where no man has gone before, I decided it was time to boldly go forth into the Land of the Sasquatch as seen through the lens of the Lateral Thinking Department Time Telescope. Here goes…

For me, it all started with a figure photographed on the surface of Mars by NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Spirit in early November 2007. To many people, it looked like a Sasquatch aka Bigfoot. I didn’t start writing LTD until 2015 so it never came on my radar in 2007. But somehow, in May 2017, I came across this image of what looks like a Sasquatch trucking along on Mars when I was writing Fake Owls. The image is grainy and indistinct, so odds are it’s a bona fide Sasquatch photo.

This is what I wrote: “Speaking of aliens, how about the whole Bigfoot On Mars thing that hit the news in late 2007?  OK, maybe the shape in the picture below sort of looks like it has the torso of a Sasquatch, but the rest of it looks more like a seal, or maybe a walrus.”

I more or less forgot about Sasquatches until Christmas 2017 when I was trying to find a gift for my son-in-law. I stumbled across this Bigfoot Dress-up kit and decided to include it in the Third Annual Lateral Thinking Department Christmas Gift Guide, Item #6. I told everyone in my lab about it and also proclaimed loudly to anyone who would listen, that I too would like a kit for Christmas.  Who wouldn’t? 

Happily, my son-in-law and I both got a kit for Christmas and early in January “Chuck” appeared in my office.

As you can see, there are a lot of random wardrobe items to choose from but the outfit below was my fav because it’s a pretty unlikely combination. It’s sort of The Incredible Journey of Haberdashery. You know, that 1963 Disney movie in which three unlikely pets, a Shoebill Crane, a Komodo Dragon and a Burrowing Owl, are separate.d from their owner on a camping trip and make their way thousands of miles across the US to return home. Or maybe it was two dogs and a cat. I forget. Anyway, the fez, the kilt and the Converse reminded me of that movie.

One day in February 2018, I came into the office and found out that Tanner Shpiruk, one of the scientists who worked for me, had been messing around with Chuck’s wardrobe. This is documented in Ghost Peppers and Other Things Peripherally Related to Kitchens.

I liked the fez/kilt combination but I didn’t want to stunt Tanner’s blossoming flair for apparel so I left Chuck alone.

Now we fast-forward to August 2018 when I wrote two posts back to back: Cryptozoology Part I and Cryptozoology Part II.

Cryptozoology Part I featured a classic example of a Cryptid photo. (Cryptids include things like Sasquatches, the Loch Ness Monster, The Toronto Tunnel Monster, The Mongolian Death Worm, Melon Heads, Skunk Apes and any elected official appearing three days in succession within a 500-metre radius of the House of Commons.)

The Cryptid I wrote about in Part I is the shy, reticent Floating Red Oval of Mystery which has been spotted throughout the swamplands of Florida pretty much since Walt Disney was in diapers.

Actually, I lied. That red oval is not the Floating Red Oval of Mystery. It’s actually a red herring (!) and is just there to highlight the indistinct blob in the background. The indistinct blob could be anything including tree stumps, a large man wearing a deep-sea diving helmet talking to a smaller man wearing an ill-fitting grey jacket with his back to the camera. Because of its graininess and indistinct nature, the tall figure is most likely a Sasquatch.

In Cryptozoology Part II, I speculated that the surfer in the background atop the cresting wave might be a Sasquatch because once again, the image is grainy and indistinct.

Three years passed.

In February 2021 I wrote this poat: Patrick Mahomes Is Definitely A Highly-Evolved Honey Badger But I Still Think Tom Brady Might Be An Immortal Humanoid Alien From The Future.

Somehow, Sasquatches managed to weasel their way into it

“The Honey Badger will fight, and try to eat, anything that moves, including lions, giant clams, Sasquatches and even Nancy Pelosi’s older, tougher, sister June “The Spartan” Dinsdale. In battle, a honey badger will wiggle, scramble and scrap for hours and almost never gives up. It has thick, tough, loose skin. It refuses to wear a mask in public. It will thrust its snout directly into a beehive and remorselessly consume the helpless larvae. It has a reversible anal gland that exudes a suffocating stench. It has nice teeth. It is immune to cobra venom. Knocked out cold from a cobra bite, it will awake seconds later, shake its head and proceed to eat the cobra. It is able to use tools. In the wild, honey badgers have been observed to playfully throw rocks at other honey badgers employing a unique sidearm delivery. In captivity it will team up with its cage-mates to escape. The Spartan soldiers of antiquity trained against teams of honey badgers prior to their (the Spartans) epic battle of Thermopylae. A honey badger (minus its reversible anal gland) will make a great pet if you can survive the first week. It is extremely loyal but harbors deep, violent loathing for long paragraphs.”

The last LTD Sasquatch mention appeared in the April 2023 post: “The Subject at Hand“. I said that New Jersey’s nickname was The Sasquatch State but to be honest, I made that up. New Jersey is actually known as The Garden State. There very well may be Sasquatches in New Jersey but we don’t know for sure. One thing I do know is that there are a lot of Bog Turtles in N.J and the State Motto is “We don’t have any Sasquatches here as far as we know but we do have a lot of Bog Turtles.”

After a one-year hiatus, I took Gunnar, my 9 year old grandson, to a Sasquatch museum in North Georgia in 2024. There were many impressive displays featuring grainy, indistinct photos and footprint casts as well as a life-size Sasquatch mannequin. Also on display were a variety of empty peanut butter jars which had supposedly been set out by researchers to attract Sasquatches. Apparently these jars would often be returned to camp the next morning, empty for the most part. Sometimes they would be returned containing a pine cone. Pine cone or no, I was pretty dubious because there was no chain of custody.

This brings us to the final chapter of our voyage of discovery which features Sasquatch Researcher David Cleaver. Cleaver confirms that Sasquatches indeed have a predilection for peanut butter. Cleaver was in the habit of leaving out labelled jars of peanut butter with the lids on and then finding the mangled empty jars, miles away from where he set them out.

Here’s Cleaver himself, giving us the scoop. If you ask me, he resembles Tim Matheson, the actor who plays the kindly doctor Vernon Mullins in Virgin River and also plays the kindly doctor Brick Breeland in Hart of Dixie.

Note the shadowy, grainy, indistinct, menacing creature that appears at the 19-21 second mark. It appears to be holding something. Maybe a peanut butter jar.

Clearly, Sasquatches continue to befuddle us. All I can say is that if something like that thing in Cleaver’s video clip shows up at your door or your campsite, just give it the darned peanut butter. And for Heaven’s sake, see if you can get a decent picture of it.