Bigfoot prints at the Crater of Diamonds were a little too close for comfort for one visiting Oklahoma family. Sightings have dramatically increased across the state. Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat’s award-winning column of humorous fabrication appears everySaturday.

Dear Otus,

As is our annual fall tradition, last week we drove over to Murfreesboro to camp out and hunt for diamonds. Our RV was on Loop A, Site 23, with full hookup and overlooked the diamond field. We pulled in as the sun was setting and a light rain began to fall.

Imagine our shock and horror when we woke up the next morning to find huge Bigfoot tracks yards from our door (photo attached). The ranger was condescending and asked us not to spread rumors among the other campers.

We don't want to cause a panic, but I've read that there has been an increase in Arkansas Bigfoot sightings lately and we know you'd give us the straight skinny.

-- Strawn Wagner

Idabel, Okla.

Dear Strawn,

It's always wholly a pleasure to hear from our readers in the Sooner State and a further pleasure to be able to shine the light of truth upon all the splenetic discussions swirling about this controversial subject.

Bottom line: Bigfoot sightings nationwide have increased 248 percent since the 2011 debut of the Animal Planet TV series Finding Bigfoot. The series finale aired May 27.

America owes a debt of gratitude to President Matt Moneymaker and his intrepid team from the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization. It was thanks to BFRO that the term squatch (short for Sasquatch) has joined the lexicon.

BFRO made several trips to Arkansas over the run of the series, the most notable of which was to the Fouke area near where the seminal film The Legend of Boggy Creek was shot in 1972. Fouke has been a hotbed for squatch and squatch-ish critters since the 1940s.

And, you will note, Murfreesboro is a scant 76 miles north of Fouke up the riparian corridors of the Red and Little Missouri rivers. It would be a simple matter for the Boggy Creek creature to hotfoot it deeper into the hills and successfully hide in the rugged and largely uninhabited region northeast of the Crater of Diamonds.

But your experience at the campground is hardly singular. State Bigfoot sightings grew to the point that the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission had to set up a Web page just to log the accounts. In 2017 alone, there were more than 70 sightings ranging from Magnolia in the south and the suburbs of Fayetteville to the wilds of Scott County.

So many sober, educated, reputable witnesses were seeing a large, hairy, muscular, bipedal ape-like creature slipping in and out of the shadows that AGF finally admitted that there were, indeed, Sasquatch in Arkansas, but that they were probably only "passing through." Officials insisted that Arkansas did not have an indigenous population of breeding squatch in the state.

An adult male Bigfoot can be up to 9 feet tall and weigh 730 pounds. They are generally described as covered in black, dark brown or dark reddish hair. The enormous footprints are said to be as large as 24 inches long and 8 inches wide.

Sasquatch are fugacious creatures adept at avoiding confrontations with humans to the point that, despite years of dedicated searching, BFRO has yet to produce anything more than circumstantial evidence of the existence of the elusive creature. Therefore, cryptozoologists still include the hominid alongside other legendary beasts such as the chupacabra and the jackalope.

Because of that lack of proof, the Gulf Coast Bigfoot Research Organization (GCBRO), a more militant Texas offshoot of BFRO, decided in 2017 to quit playing nice and launch its own TV series, Killing Bigfoot. It airs on Discovery's Destination America Channel.

This is the same channel that brings us Mountain Monsters, Paranormal Lockdown, Ghost Asylum and Terror in the Woods.

Thus far, the GCBRO has yet to find any squatch to kill, but I have a solution, since nothing is more American than hunting down and killing things.

If we want a guaranteed Bigfoot kill, all we have to do is have AGF set up an official Bigfoot hunting season and sell Bigfoot permits. Only Arkansans with a Resident Sportsman Hunting License or holders of a Lifetime Sportsman's Permit may apply.

Arkansas' 308,000 intrepid deer hunters would have a dozen squatch killed, skinned, stuffed and mounted on the den wall within a week.

Until next time Kalaka reminds you that any Bigfoot of either sex harvested in Arkansas must have cryptid wasting disease (CWD) samples taken and submitted.

Disclaimer

Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of

Z humorous fabrication X

appears every Saturday. Email:

mstorey@arkansasonline.com



Disclaimer : Fayetteville-born Otus the Head Cat's award-winning column of 👉 humorous fabrication 👈 appears every Saturday.

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