No Foot Bigfoot

There wasn't anything you could say to change Sam's mind -- he had seen Bigfoot in the timber near Muddy Creek, and that was that.

It happened late in the afternoon on a spring day. Sam was making his daily property tour in his ugly, but reliable, Suzuki Samurai. Trigger, his trusty Labrador retriever, was riding shotgun. While passing a small patch of timber, Sam had the unforgettable experience he could tell for years to come.

"He was right there," Sam would explain, pointing toward a tall cottonwood. "His body was turned a little toward me, and I could see the hair on his chest was a lighter color than the rest of him. Then he ran through the trees and down that path. He ran fast... faster than any human."

Sam's wife was the first to hear the story, and immediately started asking annoying questions. What did Sam hear? It must have made a racket with all the dead leaves and sticks on the ground. What did Trigger do? He must have gone crazy barking. Were there footprints? It must have left tracks in the soft ground.

Sam answered as best he could, but he couldn't remember hearing anything. "It happened so fast, Trigger must have missed it," he said. Later that day, a search for footprints proved unsuccessful.

"I saw it with my own eyes," Sam concluded, "so it really happened."

Everyone listened respectfully to his story; some believed and others not so much. His wife wrote it off as a daydream, but one friend decided to have a little fun with it.

A month later, Sam saw it again while passing the same area. This time it wasn't running. It was nailed to a tree -- a cardboard store display of a full-sized Bigfoot advertisement for beef jerky.