The Free Radical

Astrologically, today’s energy is highly supportive of revelations. Additionally, Crow and Raven are the longtime keepers of deep secrets… who have recently agreed to spill the beans, so to speak.

Certainly, the last few days has seen me outlining the puzzle pieces to an intriguing mystery. Yesterday, as I searched the swamp and surrounding area for more clues, I had to laugh out loud at myself as I realized that I’m actually walking through the Forest looking for signs of Bigsquatch.

Early on I coined my own term– “bigsquatch”– because I didn’t want serious researchers to get pissed off with me when my Reports would come up on their Google searches for “bigfoot.” Also, I’ve always been rather reluctant to take myself seriously on a whole schwack of topics… this being one of them!

As I’ve already stated, now I really don’t know what to think, so perhaps a little recap would be in order.

My very first mention of Bigsquatch in the Forest Reports was last summer. Foraging Alongside Bigsquatch was the title of that piece from last July. In it I describe the anomalous sounds of some very large creature crashing through the forest in the North end of the swamp below the Mesa. This wasn’t the sound of a few twigs snapping and branches breaking; it really was as though a bulldozer was making its way through the thick forest– without the accompanying sounds of an engine or of machinery in general. All I knew at the time was that, whatever it was, it was big. A couple of months later I encountered a young bull moose in the forest nearby. Still wishing to occasionally appear rational, I concluded at that time that perhaps what I’d heard in July was this bull moose having a particularly bad day. In an ever-deepening retrospect, I now point out that Moose is actually an extremely graceful animal who knows quite well how to navigate dense forests.

Next, there was an incident last fall, in October, which never made it into the Forest Reports because it didn’t seem significant enough… so I just made a mental note and filed it away. Now is the time for its resurrection. Yesterday, I returned to the site with my camera to document what I’d found last autumn.

These are five very inglorious piles of poop deposited on a game trail on the edge of the swamp. Suddenly they have relevance because I’ve never been able to determine what type of poop they are.

Put your sandwich down and check out these closeups.

In twenty-five years of roaming these hills I’ve never encountered this before! My best description is that it resembles a cross between horse shit and cow pie… very vegetarian in this instance, but much of the fibre very poorly digested. (Yeah, I poked it with a stick.) Cows haven’t been ranged in this area for more than three years now, so cow is impossible. (I know precisely when it was deposited.) It does resemble horse shit– almost– but the thing about horses is that they always leave very easily identifiable prints with their perfectly arced metal shoes and tremendous weight. Admittedly, the ground at the time of this deposit would’ve been alternating between frozen and thawed, but it is predominantly mud and clay… and even when frozen solid, I would expect to see evidence of a horse’s shoe somewhere in the surrounding area. I searched; there was none. Also, a horse with rider would most likely have been to that spot sometime in the middle of the day, not early morning when the ground is most severely frozen. No, this certainly isn’t definitive evidence, but it’s another piece to the puzzle.

And now more recently, over the past few days, there have been numerous prints which are not quite fully explainable in terms of conventional zoology.

It began with this partial print here, which made me say “Holy shit! That’s one big bear!” I couldn’t really tell if there were definite claw marks or not… but I didn’t think about it much until I later came across this next print in the mud.

I looked very closely for claw marks… but couldn’t make any out. My nephew suggested that maybe it was a cougar– who has retractable claws. If that was the case, that’d be one huge cat!

And then the next day, we came across this print.

Either it’s two overlapping prints from a rather large grizzly who somehow manages to walk without leaving claw marks, or it’s something for which I have no “reasonable” explanation. I would point out however that I have NEVER seen a grizzly in this area… but then, I’ve never seen a bigsquatch in this area either!

And now, after having made a more thorough search, I can offer one more pick that just makes me scratch my head.

Here we have two distinct prints in close proximity. The one in the foreground is the one with the really wide foot and huge toes… and no discernible claw marks. The print in front of it appears to be that of a regular-sized adult black bear– whom I’ve encountered in the woods more than 400 times! (I’m not kidding; I have extensive experience with Black Bear.)

So maybe… just maybe… Bigsquatch has a pet black bear… and they travel through the forest and swamp together.

At this point, I’m still not making any claims… just presenting the evidence… for your perusal and enjoyment!