Bigfoot Season

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

As a general rule, at least here in the Great Midwest, people with Mensa-level IQ's don't gravitate into state legislatures.  In fact some would argue that state legislatures are little more than political cesspools where turds fight for dominance in the hope of one day floating all the way to Congress.  I've mentioned the Missouri State Legislature in this space previously, an overpaid group of basically white bumpkins who meet a few months each year to try to figure out ways to help gun manufacturers sell more weapons and devise ways to give women even less control over their own bodies.

I began this week by sending an email to my state representative asking a simple question:  When would our remote area of the state begin receiving COVID vaccines?  As soon as I hit the "send" button a response popped up in my inbox.  My representative wanted me to know how honored he was to be serving our district, a nice bit of fluffery that did nothing to provide me with the information that I requested.  Two days have passed and I am still waiting.  My representative is a Republican, so he may not even believe in vaccinations, but it still looks like he could get someone in his office to answer the damned email. 

But it could be worse, I suppose.  I could be living in Oklahoma.

A state legislator in Oklahoma (a Republican, of course) made news this week when he introduced a bill that would create a Bigfoot hunting season.  Seriously - I think!  Oklahoma has been trying to horn in on the Bigfoot tourist trade by claiming that the legendary Sasquatch may inhabit more of the United States than just the heavily-timbered Pacific Northwest.  In fact, for several years now an annual "Bigfoot Festival" has been held in the Ouachita Mountains in southeastern Oklahoma near the Arkansas border.

So now a state legislator is proposing a season to hunt a species that is so endangered that no sober person has ever seen one.  Yee-haw, good buddy!   Just what the world needs - more drunks in the woods with guns!

A representative of the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation was not impressed.  He said that his agency, which oversees hunting in the state of Oklahoma, uses science-driven research and does not recognize Bigfoot.  (I may not know much about Bigfoot, but I do know that promoting "science-driven research" in this day and age could get you fired!)

My oldest grandson, Boone, and I took a road trip to Oregon in the spring of 2014.  On the way home we drove across the heavily forested mountains of Northern California, true "Bigfoot" country.  On June 9th, after a hard day of driving through those mountains, I wrote the following in a blog-posting entitled "Eastward Ho!":

"Today we drove the beautiful Oregon coast from Newport down through Brookings - and on into California as far south as Eureka.  There we turned the wagon east and headed up through the mountains in the general direction of Redding.  Tonight we are in a very small town of Willow Creek staying at the Bigfoot Motel.  (Seriously!)   We managed to get a thirty-dollar room for just ninety bucks in a sad little motel that banks on its unique name and the fact that it is the only available hostel for weary travelers within miles.  Our innkeeper looks as though he might be Bigfoot in his off-duty hours."

The Bigfoot industry is already in a pitiful way, and now Oklahoma wants to take a bigger piece of it.  That's just sad!