Bigfoot's Hanging Around Our Nation's Capital

[BPSCG]

Link (http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=35887)
With his neatly trimmed beard and blue eyes, Dranginis, 49, looks a little like Chuck Norris. He solicits reports of sightings on his Web site for the Virginia Bigfoot Research Organization—he’s the president. He also places ads in Northern Virginia Cooperative Living, a magazine published by a local utility company. (Have you seen a Bigfoot or Sasquatch-type creature in Virginia? I have.) So far, he says, he has logged about 200 Bigfoot sightings in recent years, from southern Virginia to Bull Run Park just outside Fairfax, less than 35 miles from the District.


Great. Mrs. BPSCG is antsy about our cats being out at night because there's a fox in our neighborhood. Wait 'til she finds out there's an eight-foot high hairy biped wandering around.

Maybe I need to contact the Alexandria City Council and find out what the local ordinances say about shooting Bigfoots if you spot one eating your cats.

[Gate2501]

Maybe I need to contact the Alexandria City Council and find out what the local ordinances say about shooting Bigfoots if you spot one eating your cats.

It is illegal, you must defeat them in melee combat.

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Bigfoot is number one on the terrorist watch list.

[BPSCG]

I was thinking how cool it would look stuffed and mounted over the fireplace.

In fairness, the guy in the story doesn't seem to be a complete woo. He's convinced it exists, but also realizes the importance of real evidence. And he acknowledges that he knew the plaster cast he's holding in the photo was a fake when he bought it.

[Giggywig]

I was thinking how cool it would look stuffed and mounted over the fireplace.
Bonus points for stuffing and mounting the half eaten cat in Bigfoots mouth.

[William Parcher]

In fairness, the guy in the story doesn't seem to be a complete woo. He's convinced it exists, but also realizes the importance of real evidence. And he acknowledges that he knew the plaster cast he's holding in the photo was a fake when he bought it.

As a Bigfoot skeptic, I have some disagreements. Dranginis is a Bigfoot woo, and your mention of him "realizing the importance of real evidence" could be vigorously debated. There is no confirmatory evidence for Bigfoot, and so it could be said that there is no real evidence. We have stuff that is proposed to be evidence.

The cast he is holding in the photo appears to be from the Patterson-Gimlin encounter from 1967. We have a 16mm film (the PGF) and some plaster casts that are purported to be from tracks made by the subject of the film. This famous incident is regarded as a hoax by many including some Bigfoot believers. The description Dranginis gives for the "fake" cast sounds like one that is associated with Ray Wallace. These are now widely regarded as fakes (the wooden feet used to make them are in the possession of deceased Wallace's kin), yet there are some famous Bigfooters who do not regard the casts as being fakes made by those wooden tools.

Dranginis shows some of his biased Bigfoot wooness with his bizarre rationality and reason concerning his attempts to capture Bigfoot on camera.

When Dranginis set up motion-activated cameras near his initial sighting, strange things happened, he says. Something threw sticks and rocks into the field of view, tapped the side of the camera at 1 or 2 in the morning, breathing heavily, and even placed an elm leaf in front of the lens. “These creatures are here. They’re screwing with me, screwing with the camera system. They’ve outsmarted me,” he thought.

He automatically associates these things with Bigfoot. Leaves can't fall in front of lenses. Only a Bigfoot can make this happen.

One day, as he watched footage of a deer that had triggered the system, he had an epiphany. The deer looked up at the camera and started twitching its ears. Of course, Dranginis thought. The video equipment emits ultrasonic sound. Bigfoot, he concluded, can hear the cameras.

Bigfoot (a presumed hominoid) evolved ultrasonic hearing capability. What does it do with this adaptation? It totally avoids anything making ultrasonic sounds. No... wait... it doesn't. It throws sticks and places a leaf in front of the little glass eye so that the little thingie can't take any pictures.

Brilliant Bigfoot and brilliant Dranginis. Look, he's only part woo because he calls one of his plaster casts a fake. The rest of his casts come from a genuine creature that uses his ears to avoid the rude paparazzi and their automated camera traps.