Venable: Bigfoot, where art thou?

By Sam Venable

Now that autumn colors are starting to peak around Knoxville and everybody from the rankest amateur to the most skilled professional is prowling through the woods with a camera, I have a favor to ask:

Will somebody please snap a good photograph of Bigfoot or Sasquatch or whatever his name is?

I assume it's a he, but in these days of gender equality you never know. In any event, let me reiterate: good photograph.

The world doesn't need another image of some blurred, grainy, herky-jerky, out-of-focus blob you swear on a stack of Bibles is Bigfoot but could just as easily be a scrap of tarpaper. Instead, the world needs a crisp, clear, sharp 8-by-10 suitable for framing - with maybe a dozen billfold-sized copies for only $3.95 extra - of Bigfoot in all of his furry glory.

Bigfoot reports aren't new. They have been filtering in from the forest since the dawn of creation.

The first alleged sighting occurred more than 10,000 years ago when Og the caveman came sprinting home and blurted to his wife, "Bokojimmie rammerjammer whoopie-wowzer!" That's cavespeak for, "I just saw Bigfoot!"

To which his wife replied, "Yeah, right. What you saw was your cousin Ig, who refuses to bathe and shave once a year like civilized people. I swear, if you'd spend more time hunting and gathering instead of cooking up cockamamie stories about this Bigfoot creature, maybe we'd have something to eat around here!"

And it's been the same ever since.

But as routine as these alleged sightings have become, seems like they mushroomed this year.

There was one in Michigan in June, another in Pennsylvania last month. In July, the New York Times devoted a big story and three illustrations to the Brazillian version of Bigfoot, a so-called "mapinguary."

Even Tennessee has gotten in on the act.

According to the Web-based Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization - yes, Virginia, there really is such an outfit - 51 "listings" have been posted for the Volunteer State since the early 1980s. (Personal note: It's been my casual observation that people tend to "list" from side to side after serious ingestion of alcohol, but that's neither here nor there, so forget I even mentioned it.)

The three most recent were this past July in Tipton County ("smell and branch twist" near the Atoka community), April 2006 in Sevier County ("possible vocalization" near Pigeon Forge) and July 2003 in Bradley County ("nighttime sighting by motorists on Interstate 75, south of the Hiwassee River.")

Alas, Knox County hasn't ever recorded a listing. Closest to us were single reports from Anderson County in November 2003, Blount County in December 2004 and Grainger County in April 2005.

That last date is important.

Just a few weeks ago, Grainger County was the site of an attempt to set a Guinness record with the cooking and serving of 600 gallons of pinto beans.

After such a gastronomic feat, any smells, branch twisting and vocalizations could not be credited to Bigfoot.

Or blamed, as the case may be.