BIGFOOT: A matter of semantics

This arrived in Corinna's in-box yesterday, and is so peculiarly phrased that it is difficult to know what to make of it.

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 16:35:43 -0500> Subject: [chupacabra] Body found in Mississippi "not human"> > From the Vicksburg (MS) Post: 17 Feb. 2009> Sheriff says remains not ID'd>

By Pamela Hitchins> > A body found in the Big Black River near U.S. 80 late Monday and believed to > be human was determined this morning to be that of an unidentified animal.> The determination came as an autopsy began at the Mississippi State Crime > Lab in Jackson.> "It is not human," Warren County Sheriff Martin Pace said. "I repeat, it is > not human."> The body was found by a father and son looking through scopes on rifles on > U.S. 80 just east of Warren-Hinds county line at about 3 Monday afternoon.> Speculation Monday and early this morning had centered on Benjamin Bearrick, > a 55-year-old Warriors Trail resident who has not been seen since Jan. 25, > two days after he drove his next-door neighbor and tenant to a hospital with > fatal stab wounds.> The death of Shawn Sponholz, 50, 5125 Warriors Trail, was ruled a homicide.>

Hmmmmm. I have left all the chevrons in because this is the way that the story appeared when it turned up in my email in-box. The rest of the story goes on to detail a rather tedious homicide investigation.

But we are left with a tantalising question, and furthermore one which I have a sneaking suspicion will come back to bite future generations of cryptozoologists on the bum. Whereas it is almost certain that the cadaver which was fished out of the river was that of a deer or some other creature, and was do badly decomposed that by the time the fishermen found it, it had become just a decaying mass of organic matter that could have been anything.

However, there remains the gloriously tantalising possibility that the reason that the people who first recovered the cadaver thought it was human because it was humaniform in appearance. This is almost certainly not the case. Indeed there is no evidence at all that this is the case, and the whole thing rests on a matter of semantics.

But I will place a small bet that someone will dredge this story up in years to come and concoct a conspiracy theory around it.