Messin' with Bigfoot

It might sound like a special offer from Jack Link's beef jerky: "HAVE U SEEN BIG FOOT? DETAILS INSIDE," says the sign outside a Fort Mitchell convenience store on Alabama 165.

Slim Jim of the backcountry hip, Jack Link's beef jerky has these "Messin' With Sasquatch" TV ads in which people play pranks on Bigfoot -- like a guy sneaks up on Bigfoot's cookout and loosens the top of a salt shaker before Bigfoot sees him and smacks him upside the head. Another mean trick would be to set out a pack of "All-Beef Wieners" that Bigfoot bit before discovering it's beef jerky.

That Bigfoot sign outside Fort Mitchell's BP Quick Stop could sound like a beef jerky plug, but store owner Karen Webster isn't shillin' for Jack Link's. She's trying to help Internet radio host Tom Biscardi hunt for Bigfoot.

Baited by a Bigfoot 911 call that came from that store in the year 2000, Biscardi is biting at the Slim Jim of a chance that he can actually track that critter down.

I posted a recording of that 911 call online on Oct. 29. A Russell County sheriff's dispatcher took the call about 11 o'clock one August night when two guys scared witless whipped into the Quick Stop to report that a tall creature attacked their dog at Rood Creek Park, 20 miles south of there on the Georgia side of the Chattahoochee River.

After that report hit the news in 2000, a woman working in nearby Omaha, Ga., and a park ranger giving tours of Rood Creek's prehistoric Indian mounds both told me of some local folklore about a Bigfoot-like character there. Ranger Trena Evans says old-timers around Florence Marina State Park, about 4 miles north of Rood, call the creature "Shaggy Bean."

But that's as far as this Bigfoot tale goes. The two men reporting that 2000 attack fled, abandoning their camping gear. They were never heard from again.

"They were terrified," says Webster, whose store workers called her when the men showed up. "They totally took off. They said they were not going back there, and these were grown, logical men. They saw something."

Biscardi, whose online Bigfoot show's at 10 p.m. our time each Wednesday, now is traveling the country to talk to people who've seen Bigfoot. His Internet site is www.searchingfor

bigfoot.com. His show is by and for those whose faith in Bigfoot seems unshakable. They report multiple sightings.

I still don't know why none of these Bigfoots ever gets hit by a car, shot by a hunter, struck by lightning, drowned in a flood, crushed by a landslide or subjected to some other misfortune that would leave a carcass.

I talked to Biscardi by phone Thursday. He said he was in Florida and hoping to reach Fort Mitchell today. So Webster hospitably has been soliciting Bigfoot tales in anticipation of his visit. She's not a big Bigfoot believer herself, but she's willing to help out. If you've any Bigfoot sightings to report, you can call her store at 334-855-2174.

So far, only one customer has reported seeing a Bigfoot, back in the woods off Russell County 24, also known as Bradley Road, Webster says. That man doesn't want his story publicized, and she doesn't blame him: "People think you're crazy when you say stuff like that."

About the only other weird story they've heard at the store lately is another local resident's tale of a huge dog, about the size of a grown deer, that keeps showing up on his property. The dog has a massive head, he said.

"He said it's the biggest dog he's ever seen in his life," Webster says. The man calls it "Dogzilla."

Fort Mitchell's a long walk from Rood Creek, so it's possible people in those parts haven't been messin' with Sasquatch anywhere but that campground down around those Indian mounds. The campground gates were locked when I went down there Friday, but Evans says she still gives tours of the mounds. People interested in those earthen mounds, which date from 900 to around 1500 A.D., can call her at 229-838-4706.

If there really is some sort of Shaggy-Beany Sasquatchy Bigfooted thing out there, we'd like to know, so if you've been messin' with one, please report it to Webster or Biscardi, or me. Or call 911, if it's an emergency.

Especially if you hit one with your SUV, and you've got an actual body we can see.

A Bigfoot body, I mean.