My Time As A 'Squatch

Let me tell you something my friend, Big Foot is Big Money. If there's ever a lesson to learn from the internet it's that a lot more people believe in ridiculous bullshit than you could possibly imagine. Once people start spending their free time on these sites a weird kind of positive enforcement feedback loop occurs and even smart people can find themselves turning from curious and open-minded to rapid conspiracy theorists. This has changed the game when it comes to the field of cryptozoology, in short for the first time ever the believers have cash. You see as recently as late nineties the average sasquatch believer was a semi-literate hill-person whose mind was trying to defend itself from memories of horrifying uncle related abuse. These days the believers aren't trying running moonshine but running Fortune 500 companies. Ever since the founding of the Catholic Church men with an eye for opportunity have been trying to part the incredulous with whatever wealth they may have. So when the Venn diagram showing wealth and a belief in big foot started to overlap, I stepped up.

People like this.

There's plenty of towns throughout the Pacific North-West that do a roaring trade in Big-Foot related tourism. Fortunately there's plenty of others who want a piece of that pie, especially in these tough economic times. The average town can only take so much of seeing the next town over coining it in off a particularly gullible type of tourist before finally caving. That's where I come in. I've been squatching for about five years now, and I say with delusion that I'm the best damn squatcher in the business. Some people will slap on a suit go for a stroll and let a partner in crime film it and shove it up on the internet. A video like that gets torn to shreds pretty quickly. To many loose ends. Those guys are usually trying to make money off the back end... 'I Saw Big-Foot' t-shirts and so forth. I get paid cash up front, usually by the local tourist board and for that they get a different level of service.

There is a lot of money in local tourist boards.

I'll spend up to a month getting to know a two to three square mile patch of forest, it's got to be easy to hide in, usually I like a there to be a lot of geographical range, say a river, a few cliffs, variation is key to my work. Now instead of hiding away in a cave or something I usually set up a camp in the midst of the woods. I carry all of the paraphernalia of a true-believer, if anyone questions my presence, I'm hunting big-foot. It's key that the chosen area has a challenging but not infrequently used hiking trail. Ideally I want someone to pas through about once a day. I find a decent diner and settle in and wait for my mark.

I have no diner related jokes.

I'm looking for a particular type of person, They've got to have a decent camera, those are easy enough to spot these days the amateurs use their phones more often than not. They've got to be slightly older I don't need any of them trying to run me down and most importantly they've got to be open minded. I usually slip the waitress a few bucks to through in a few big-foot related questions. It helps that I'm usually employed a few towns over from a somewhere that's been trading off the big-foot name for awhile. I prefer a couple, usually one of them is more of a believer than the other and they might still be bickering about two or three hours later. That's when I make my move.

The woods friend to both the sasquatch and the rapist.

It's important to note that a lot of prep-work has been done before the squatch-suit goes on footprints will have been laid, animal bones with unusual teeth-marks will have been placed nearby. I also have a blend of certain chemicals that gives an odour matching the descriptions the nut-jobs have come up with for the 'creatures' urine. Only after all this prep has been done do I engage the target. That's not as bad as it sounds, I suit up in and run full tilt towards the trail where the mark awaits, I try to cut across the path about five hundred feet ahead of them. It's very important to choose a straight bit of trail for this otherwise they won't have the right visibility. It's important to make as much noise as possible and to not break pace no matter what. Ideally the mark should have enough time to snap off one blurry shot that they will have uploaded to the internet within minutes. The photo is not the key though, the real prize is the fact that the mark is converted to a believer with all the zeal of a convert. One bad photo with a staunch defender is worth a HD quality fake without it.

Much like this thing.

It's about this time that I officially arrive in the area, just in time to appear as an 'expert' on the the elusive beast on the local news. The resulting media buzz around the town can as much as double the towns tourism earnings for anywhere up to a month maybe more if timed right. I double my fees just before the summer break. Some people would call my line of work dishonest, but these idiots are going to find someone to take their money at least I'm creating jobs in the process. Well right up until the point some fuck-weasel tags you with a tranquilliser dart and you fall down a ravine and into a river. At that point you have to hope to the fates and pray someone saves you... I my case it's how I wound up meeting Big-Foot.

eddie <only the third weirdest job I ever had>