Cryptids

 

                                          Cryptids

        Way off my usual track. But since Joe Biden refuses to f**k up, and I’m too sick of Republican Congressmen to write about them, here’s something, as the Pythons might say, “completely different.”

        “Cryptid” refers to an animal (such as Sasquatch or the Loch Ness Monster) that has been claimed to exist but never proven to exist.

        If you find yourself with time on your hands and no clue as to how to use it, but only if the loss of the time is of no consequence, try to find a TV show called Mountain Monsters. I watched part of one episode several years ago on a non-football Saturday, and still regret that I can’t get the time back. It’s hard to summarize all that’s wrong with this show, but even harder to believe that there have been 72 episodes made and it is still in production on the Travel Channel.

        I watched the last half of one first season episode based on the title which caught my eye. “The Wampus Beast of Pleasants County” features the series’ usual cast of fourth grade dropouts, sporting names like “Colt” and Buck” and, in this episode as in all episodes, they are attempting to capture or at least photograph a legendary (think “mythical”) critter who has been allegedly seen in or around the backwoods town of Devil’s Asshole, Kentucky (or Alabama, or West Virginia, or Tennessee, but never anywhere that more than 6% of the population have the majority of their adult teeth).

        They always start by interviewing some local who had a third cousin, once removed, whose daddy said he “Seen the Wampus Beast one night when he was sorta high on corn squeezins. Hit were big and black like some kinda giant cat, and its eyes glowed like they was on fire!”

        Armed with this description the boys then attribute every unexplained animal death in the region over the past ten years to this creature, or one similar. What follows is formulaic to every episode, whether the Wampus Beast, the bloodsucking Devil Dog of Logan County, Lizard Demon of Wood County, or the elusive (as they are all) Werewolf of Webster County.

        First, the interviews with rural imbeciles, followed by what passes as a “scholarly” cast discussion of “Where did it come from?”, “How can we find it?”  and then, as the show ends, the failure of whatever trap they set to contain the critter du jour. Never, ever, is the Cryptid actually seen except as perhaps, a vague shadow moving in the woods, or a screech is heard, perhaps the “call” of the “Waya Woman of Jackson County.”  (Note: the “Waya Woman” is a reputedly 7-foot-tall female werewolf who trashes corn fields without bothering to make crop circles. Her trap fails, as they all seem to do, in season 6.

        Along the way, as I read the history of this redneck tripe-fest, I noted that they spent an inordinately large portion of their time looking for Bigfoots.("Bigfeet?"). There are apparently more than one, scattered across America’s "snake handler belt", as well as the Pacific Northwest but none has ever been caught, or truly photographed, for that matter.

         Reading further I found that there was also a long running series, ludicrously referred to by the producers as a “documentary,” called ‘Finding Bigfoot.” Spoiler alert: they never did, in 9 seasons, even though they used “Lures” (Bigfoot dummies) and a ton of high-tech optics and audio gear. Oddly enough, they always got close. Only to have their hopes of a real sighting cruelly dashed at the end of the show. (The “juvenile Bigfoot captured on camera was a young bear with mange!) I recall having channel surfed (pre-streaming) across another one of these shows where the Cryptid Cops were in the afore mentioned Northwest, where they scoured the woods fruitlessly.

         These guys were apparently more intimately acquainted with Bigfoot, as they referred to him (them?, it?, she?) as a “Squatch” apparently their nickname for Sasquatch. Being a teacher, I feel compelled to pen several sentences related to the names. Sasquatch is of Canadian First Nations origin, meaning various large critters, but “Bigfoot” actually relates to two giant grizzlies, one in 1890s California and another in early 1900s Idaho in the Snake and Salmon Rivers area. Both were described as weighing in the area of 2,000 pounds and were trackable by their huge paw prints. Early references to Sasquatch and/or the Skunk Ape (apparently he doesn’t use good personal hygiene) mentioned huge foot prints, ergo the Bigfoot nickname. The Bigfoot hunters are eager to identify any noise in the Northwoods as “A Squatch.”

        And now to the anecdotal incident which led me to write this mess: In one episode of Bigfoot Hunters, deep in the Pacific North Woods, apparently one new ploy devised by the cast of stalwarts was to entice a “Squatch” into making themself known by making the “mating call” of a female. Yes, of course it’s ludicrous, but wait. When I read this all I could think of was “What if they succeed, and a randy “Squatch” engorged with passion, and obviously in the mood, bursts from the forest in search of love? Did the cast draw straws to choose the unlucky “girl friend?” Now that show I’d be forced to watch!