Grin & Bear it!

On February 10th a worker at a local landfill was scraping some mud out of the tracks of a piece of earthmoving equipment. In the mud he found what appeared to be a severed human left foot. Subsequent examination showed that it was not a human foot but appeared to be a foot from some branch of the ape family.  We even had people who believe that Big Foot or Sasquatch lives in Virginia and that this might have been from such a critter.  Google search on "foot landfill Virginia" and you can find a multitude of stories about our big adventure here. What follows is my twisted take on the whole fiasco:

It's a bear's foot...thank heavens they have identified it! The mystery has been solved before those dweebs on Mythbusters zeroed in on our big doins here.

If you're traveling in the next few days or weeks and you live in Spotsylvania County , you might want to avoid mentioning where you are from. Now that the great foot mystery has been solved one might expect things to calm down a bit but a check on Google this AM yielded nearly 100 hits on sites mentioning "landfill, foot and Virginia" from places as far away as California and Washington State. There are even some people in Arkansas and Utah who know about it. I can't for the life of me imagine why anyone would go to Arkansas unless they were being extradited there from Virginia but there may be some skiers headed out towards Salt Lake City.

After the "human/not human", "ape/not ape", "Bigfoot/what have you been smoking" controversies have been discussed in so many towns which never get to enjoy events this exciting we must have a pretty high profile in our search for fame. OK, maybe not so much but we at least have our foot in the door. (Yeah, yeah, yeah...I know that sucked...so sue me...it will be tossed out of court...you won't have a leg to stand on.) As you bask in the glory of notoriety in your travels remember that this kind of glory can be a two edged sword. This means that we are also associated with a group  the wing nuts who believe that Big Foot lives in Virginia. Nobody I know has ever publicly claimed to have seen Sasquatch waiting in a slug line or in a line at Carl's but I have seen a couple of guys on Redskins broadcasts that might have been related.

My first thought after seeing that lovely picture run here and in the paper was that it might be that hairy caveman guy from that insurance commercial.

My favorite comment on this whole fiasco was from Laura Moyer last week during the snow/ice/wintery mix event. I won't quote her here but you can see that on her blog. Scroll down a bit, it's there under the title "Snow and Sleet".

I'm still trying to track down a rumor about the National Park Service trying to acquire the landfill site and a 5,000 yard visual buffer because of its historical significance. Maybe Fredericksburg area soccer fans will support that effort.

Do you think there is any chance that City Council will decide that next year's First Night observance should be the dropping of a bear's foot. Guess it's better than bear droppings....that would be a tough headline to write. "COUNCIL DECIDES ON BEAR DROPPINGS FOR NEW YEARS!"

Comments

[davidjcarney]

A few months ago there was a similar find in Cincinnati. An alleged human foot was found at a gas station. Local TV news tabloided the story without any confirmation, without any reporter actually eyeballing the evidence. The foot turned out to belong to some other mammalian species, not even close to human. The person who found the foot never claimed it was human, but the story became embellished with each retelling.