bigfoot taxonomy 1010

this is where all of the field research gets broken down into quantifiable data and tabulated into an easily referenced chart. something to send off in the packet to the new interns so they know what the hell they’re looking for. I mean these kids get a head full of romantic ideas and before you know it they’re running off into the woods with next to no preparation. and you can’t help but feel personally responsible when one of 'em gets hisself into a mess. it’s getting to the point that I don’t even like to pick up the paper anymore… p.162
pretty much everything gets covered here. physical and metaphysical characteristics and behavior, speed, whistling.

still, there are things that just can’t be reduced to tables, dashes and plus marks. for some of us, charts are too abstract and there’s something to be said for being able to put a face, however homely, with your bigfoot experience.
p.272
you say Zinjanthropus. I say Nutcracker Man.

the venus of ernest sound &c.

just so we don’t get a partisan view, J. Robert Alley includes some other perspectives. so there are also drawings here that are not done by the author. like this lady sasquatch reported by a taxedermist on page 74.

as well as this drawing that James Endershaw did of a “large male sasquatch reported seen sleeping in a cave” in 1982.
p. 49
it’s definitely rustic, with pine trees and river stones shown to indicate relative size. a little surreal, kind of like a worn treasure map that’s actually one of those pictures that you turn upside down and it turns out to really be something else: a sloth hiding in its slothnest.

3 final encounters

your firearms are useless against them p.233
2 hunters (foreshortened from above) approach the scene of a pack of tribbles assembling round a black bear. bear apparently having fallen from the heavens, making a modest crater. the message parcel, with upturned hind foot, travels all the way from Ursa Minor bearing no more than a lame pun.


signifying bigfoot
p. 53
bigfoot advancing through the variegated foliage & and presenting an enigmatic token with the left hand. a gesture which his cheerless poker face doesn’t offer any key to understanding. (more rubber stamps too)

p.31
bigfoot retreating back into the scribbley umbrage, not without displaying proof of his true identity. now this would have made a terrific classic bigfoot photo.

bigfoot analogy test

ok, I get it.
typically, people are to bigfoot as black bears are to grizzlies.

p. 168
and we are poor, helpless, hairless creatures indeed. and without claws. it’s a wonder we can even feed ourselves and tie our own shoes.

bigfoot on the beach

little bigfoot p. 83
barrel-chested and caught midstep, emerging from the tangled brush. I think some of it is even made up of rubber stamps. evidently the witness somehow associated this experience with earlier memories of scrapbooking. yeah, we're now to the point where some people are actually starting to process their memories that way in advance. can you believe?
so when you’re doing a drawing from a witness’s account, sometimes you have to coddle them. it’s been a distressing experience for her.
that and she wears a faint halo.

if you go out in the woods today
you’re sure of a big surprise
if you go out in the woods today
you’d better go in disguise

if you go out in the woods today
you’d better not go alone
it’s lovely out in the woods today
but safer to stay at home

p. 86
shameful

with any good pair of binoculars must come a measure of discretion. this is definitely not meant for your viewfinder.

boatside antics

there aren’t any studies out there comparing dolphin and bigfoot intelligence. but one thing’s for sure; dolphins can get away with this kind of behavior and bigfoot cannot. it just comes off as needy and kind of pathetic.
this guy’s had enough and he’s about to karate kick him.
p.50

have you ever sat in a bright diner on a dark night. you know about the fishbowl effect. sometimes it feels as if the darkness is reaching in at you. that’s what happened to the skipper one night in his galley.
p.55
bigfoot chooses between 3 tables and their contents.
through window #1- a pair of binoculars
through window #2- skipper Harold A. and his personal effects (pen & paper, cappuccino?)
through window #3- dripping wet gloves, galoshes and rain slicker.

this bigfoot has no use for our material superfluities but chooses human contact, affection.

illustration rendered in grainy detail, like it was taken with high-speed film.

I like the way she shaked it right then

this should totally be a Hardy Boys book cover.
p.219
we could all see it coming. now bigfoot returns to that white sedan; championing women’s equality, a Rosa Parks among Alaskans. she teaches the guys a lesson they’ll likely forget. but those vigorous shake lines will stay with them forever.

guess she didn’t like their antagonistic NRA bumper sticker either.

bigfoot regulates

"the many recurring themes such as transformation, capturing the drowned, and stealing and/or cannibalizing children may be viewed as recurring folk motifs with regulatory functions in culture."
p. 160
p. 108
a neo-goldilocks tale to keep the neo-nazis in check.

moonwalking bigfoot

p.77

what more is there to say here?
he seems to be really feeling it.











a uniquely American reworking of the Abraham & Isaac story. except in this instance bigfoot intervenes with a large bouncing boulder instead of an angel. can you make him out there in the thicket? I can’t. bigfoot doesn’t reveal his corporeal self but does make his will known: “noli me tangiere, for bigfoot’s I am.”
p. 221
and again there’s the hunter on the right trying earnestly to win favor in his sight, dancing.

jaywalking bigfoot

ok, so we still haven’t caught one in the very act yet. but you know they’re doing it all the time when we’re not watching! look at this one.
p.20

he’s just about mustered up the courage when a cyclist approaches. how awkward for both of them: bigfoot pretends to have dropped or lost something in the grass, a contact lens maybe. and the cyclist is in no position to call his bluff. just keep pedaling. boy, you got that right.


this next one’s a bit more dramatic. can you imagine?
p. 227

up until this very moment the big kid in the middle has dominated the conversation (and the little girl’s attention) the whole way. he was really on a roll. suddenly his authority begins to fade as he doesn’t seem so big nor his stories so great. this kind of formative experience often begins the arch nemesis relationship or other such complex. (now I hate you bigfoot, that’s what he’s feeling.) this is a constant difficulty for bigfoot. what we see as showboating is just bigfoot being himself. you know, keeping it real. this is simply what he does all the time when we’re not looking.
really, it’s not technically jaywalking on a dirt road like this, but he clearly cut those youngsters off. he’s just lucky nobody was hurt.

further early frontier narrative & legend

p.44

you may be sure that you have reached the edge of the earth when you stumble upon Sasquatch cleansing his hands just upstream from the last waterfall, well done.

although you have now already passed by the fountain of youth and all seven cities of gold, this is a far greater quarry.

peace to you

cain & bigfoot

“The damnedest thing happened. We were just about to break out of the timber, you know, to get to the meadows, and right above us twenty-five to thirty goats come stampeding down on us…He said to me, ‘did you see that thing that was running those goats up there?’ I said, ‘No,’ and he said to me, ‘You should have seen it! It was about ten feet tall and all covered with black hair…”
(eyewitness account, p.90)




we read that Cain was a “tiller of the ground.” so how is it that now we find him in the company of goats?

a lot can change in 6,000 years.




“tell me about it,” Cain says. “and damn the rainbow! I’m about ready for another flood.”

american bigfoot

I’ve been doing a little research on bigfoot lately. you know; went out on my porch with the binoculars for a while, talked to some close friends and family about it, subscribed to all the scholarly journals on the subject. yeah, you could say that by now I’ve read most of the guys.

this one’s pretty good and has some great pen/ink illustrations by the author himself.
Raincoast Sasquatch by J. Robert Alley
2003, Hancock House Publishers. Blaine, Washington
there are a lot of lessons that we can take from here. some teach us about bigfoot and some teach us more about ourselves. hopefully you can discover some new things for yourself from the drawings.

like for example I learn that bigfoot:
* has pin-straight hair.
* has large feet. I think you need to be at least a size 18 to really be a bigfoot.
* tends to manifest himself to those of low estate, like people with fetal alcohol syndrome.
* sometimes gets cross, just like you and me, and can sometimes express this anger inappropriately with snowballs and tree trunks.
I mean let’s face it. life is not as simple for bigfoots as it was, say 400 years ago. modernity has brought bassboats, travel chess, bug zappers, Maverick country stores and white sedans deeper and deeper into what was once bigfoot country. along with all this comes the complexity and the difficult choices that accompany such developments. it’s really enough to run a fellow ragged.
p.68

here we find him at the crossroads, if you will (and I know you will). alienated between pines and asphalt, obscurity and illumination. 2 pair of perpendicularly overlaid binaries. like an origami fortune teller; you might print this off and make one.