That's No Bigfoot - It's A Rubber Gorilla Suit

Very few Tennessee bloggers are as devoted as my dear friend Newscoma to the nuances and incidents which is the legend that is Bigfoot. Last week she experienced some bona fide joy regarding the reports that some hunters/entrepreneurs in Georgia (the one in the U.S.) had indeed obtained the remains of just such a creature, aka The Georgia Gorilla.

She posted a pic of the critter on her blog and even to my untrained scientific eyes I detected some pretty hinky things about that image which were taken as the critter lay nestled inside a freezer packed with ice. Newscoma was close to traveling to California last week to witness the news conference heralding the event, which was to feature DNA samples.

So I must offer my condolences to her and share my dismay when the Reuters News Agency reported the following: it was simply a rubber gorilla suit:

"No wonder Bigfoot failed a DNA test. Researchers said on Tuesday the hairy heap claimed by two men to be the corpse of the mythical half-ape, half-human creature was actually a full-body rubber gorilla costume.

The discovery adds another dimension to what appears to be an elaborate hoax by Matthew Whitton and Rick Dyer, the owners of a company that offers Bigfoot merchandise, that sparked an Internet frenzy last week.

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"Steve Kulls, executive director of the Web site Squatchdetective.com and host of Squatchdetective Radio, said in an online statement that the rubber suit was discovered after the researchers thawed the "corpse."

In a detailed statement, Kulls said researchers had used heat to speed up the thawing of the shaggy remains. Within an hour, they realized at least part of the head was hollow and, over the next hour, a break appeared near the feet.

"As the team and I began examining this area ... I observed the foot which looked unnatural, reached in and confirmed it was a rubber foot," said Kulls.

The whereabouts of Whitton and Dyer were not known on Tuesday."

Ah, for the lack mystery in our humble nation. Seems the oddest and most unexplainable events still occur in the Congress and the White House.