That’s what some homeless folks are saying they saw, and the cops they talked to said they were scared, but sober.

Hmmmmm. That’s how far from SFBR (the think tank that Tom Slick founded and home of the Southwest Primate Research Center)?

.

UPDATE: Loren Coleman has posted more details about the events in San Antonio, including photos of possible hand/foot prints,  over at Cryptomundo.com

For an excellent Slick biography, check out Loren Coleman’s Tom Slick and the Search for the Yeti.

"And in this frame, if we blow it up enough, we can clearly see all the way to the coast and this blip here, this is Patty's brother, out on the ocean, jumping the shark."

This Thursday, I’m just wondering… is MK Davis the Andy Kaufman of the Bigfoot world? Is the Bluff Creek Massacre story his slow-burn version of wrestling Freddie Blassie?

I really hope so. I’d love to be able to actually sit back and comfortably chuckle at the strangeness of it all.

I mean, personally, I see the same twisted logic in the “Why doesn’t John Green just tell us what is on his back if not a camera?” argument from Davis supporter David Paulides that I see in the Gilbert Gottfried inspired  “Did Glen Beck rape and murder a young girl in 1990?” meme.

For those not familiar, the joke originated with a celebrity roast of Bob Saget where Gottfried asked why Saget never denied rumors that he had raped and murdered a young girl in 1990. A rumor that never existed until Godfrey created it, and that the comedian quickly followed with a proclamation that, while he himself didn’t believe it was true, it was curious that Saget never denied it.

The creative mind behind the Glenn Beck riff on this joke is skewering a tactic Beck often employs himself. That is, blind siding a guest with a ridiculous charge that he claims not to believe; but that he wants the guest to refute.

It would be great if Davis and friends were doing the same. Simply skewering the Bigfoot world’s sacred cows and inserting some levity in a field that sometimes takes itself too seriously, instead of jumping the shark after doing some undeniably worthwhile work stabilizing the PG footage.

Laughter is, after all, the best medicine.

But methinks the truth may be that MK needs something just a little bit stronger.

Reuters is reporting that Russian authorities have assumed custody of a five year old girl who has spent the majority of her life locked in an unheated flat in the Siberian city of Chita with a group of dogs and cats. The child, who authorities assume to be around five years old despite stunted growth that makes her appear to be around two years of age, is non-vocal and exhibits dog-like behavior, such as barking and jumping at doors whenever care takers leave the room. (More at Reuters.com)

The girl, who is being called “Natasha”, is far from the first documented feral child. While the mythic founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus (who legend claims were suckled by a she wolf after being saved from death by having their basket set in the Tiber River and washing ashore Moses style) are among the most famous of the feral children and Rudyard Kipling’s fictional Mowgli, from the Jungle Book, lends his name to the syndrome for children who adopt the characteristics of animals they grow up with; there are several documented cases of actual feral children. These cases include:

Peter, the Wild Boy of Hamelin

The Wild Girl of Champagne

Oxana Malaya, the dog girl of Ukraine

Traian Caldarar, the wild boy of Romania

There are also a number of children who, while not technically “feral” in the sense of being raised by animals, have been abandoned due to mental incapacity and then had the feral child myth constructed around them (such as the famous Indian “wolf girls” Amala and Kamala) or otherwise held in isolation by their parents or care-givers. In addition there are a number of unsubstantiated or poorly documented stories out of African nations , especially those savaged by years of war such as Sierra Leone and Uganda, of children raised by apes or monkeys after losing their parents.

There are also the outright hoaxes, usually of the carnival side-show variety where a physical or mental deficiency was exploited for monetary gain, however there are enough verifiable accounts to make the phenomenon an intriguing study.