Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
The legend of Bigfoot lives on in woods of US
Anxious travellers call animal shelter to report false sighting of legendary, hair, apelike creature
HIDDEN in the woods in rural North Carolina, US, stands an 2.5m-tall creature with what appears to be luscious black fur, flared nostrils and abdominal muscles that would put the Terminator to shame.
It looks scary, holding a giant branch. And when its eyes are caught in the headlight beams from approaching drivers, those peepers glow blood red.
Perhaps that’s why people have been calling a local animal shelter to report what they think it is: Bigfoot.
It is, in fact, a statue. But when animal control began receiving calls about a Bigfoot sighting, it decided to set things straight.
“This handsome fellow stands on the ridge,” Davie County Animal Shelter said in a Facebook Post late last week. “If you are travelling this road at night, please be advised that the eyes appear to glow. If you see this phenomenon, you do not need to call animal control to report seeing Bigfoot, Sasquatch or any other large creature. Thank you.”
Lisa Nielson, with the Davie County Animal Shelter, said officers received several calls one evening last week about a Sasquatch on private property near a country road.
Each time, she said, officers had to explain that it was simply a chainsaw carving that was likely made to resemble the hairy, apelike creature famous from folklore.
Nielson said that the callers also commented about the red, glowing eyes – which turned out to be red marbles or red glass that happened to capture drivers’ headlights just about right.
Nielson said she posted the message on Facebook on Friday morning so that people would not keep calling with non-emergency matters.
The post drew dozens of comments, with people making light of the unusual situation.
One person commented on the post: Dispatcher: 911, what’s your emergency?
Caller: OH MY GOODNESS, I JUST SAW BIGFOOT!!! SEND HELP!
Dispatcher: Are you on pine ridge road?
Caller: Uhh, yes how’d you know? Dispatcher: Ninth time today with this.
Others continued on about the statue:
“I’m kind of diggin’ those 6-pack abs on Sasquatch,” one person wrote.
“If I wasn’t already married,” another said.
Some wanted to know where the carving came from and others asked whether they could borrow it. Then someone from the Davie County Animal Shelter joined in on the jokes: “Are we taking bids?”
“We’re just blown away by the response,” Nielson, with the Davie County Animal Shelter, said.
“We try to have a lot of fun with our Facebook page, but we never expected this.”
Giggles aside, we are not the experts on Bigfoot, Sasquatch or even the Abominable Snowman, or Yeti. However, the Bigfoot Field Researchers’ Organisation, which collects data on reported bigfoot sightings, has recorded more than 5 000 such sightings in the United States, 96 of them in North Carolina.
And one of them in Davie County. That report stated that one summer night in 1977, three teenage boys spotted the creature near Lake Myers in Davie County. – The Washington Post.