Bigfoot Hoax in Montana

Not much to note, but it made the news...

Hoax?

An odd little story out of Mississippi: (News source.)

"According to police, two postal workers and two parents picking their children up from school claimed to have seen a huge primate run into the woods behind the post office shortly after 2 p.m.
"Because all the accounts were separate instances, School Resource Officer Lt. Terry Sanford said he doesn’t doubt that people saw something, but he’s almost sure it wasn’t a gorilla.
"'We got a few calls about the gorilla, but we didn’t see anything,' said Sanford. 'People said they saw the animal run into the woods. I think what they saw was a person dressed in a suit trying to get a reaction out of people.'
"A local costume dealer said a man and a woman bought a gorilla head and hands Tuesday, stating that they already had a suit."

April Fool's Roundup

Why, yes, Virginia, there are April Fool's monster stories out today...

The Loch Ness Monster was captured.

Welsh yetis are on the rampage.

Crocodiles have invaded the Tennessee River.

Now, if only Amazon's hijacking of the print-on-demand book industry was a joke...

[Update: and more... an Alaskan bigfoot, and a Michigan crocodile.]

Another China Tiger Hoax

China is unhappy with a tv reporter who apparently faked a wild tiger video, using a circus animal. (News source.)

Chinese Gov't and the Tiger Photo

Chinese officials are going to continue their search for South China tigers despite evidence that the photo recently publicized is a fake. Looks like they may be planning to create a tourist draw in the area. (News source.)

Rumors and Big Cats

Stories and rumors in Southern Illinois have government helicopters dropping cougars into woodlands to take the deer population down. What's the farm-country counterpart to an urban legend; a rural myth? (News source.)

Some People Like a Good Story

From a news column on tale-tellers (who do appear in the odd investigation):

"Junior Jones could tell a good story.
"As a college student, I worked at a Min-A-Mart where Junior was a regular. He'd stand around drinking coffee. I didn't charge him because I didn't want him to leave.
"Co-workers would get annoyed and go fill the beer cooler.
"I'd listen to Junior tell tales.
"Later, I learned that Junior was the one who created a minor media frenzy a few years earlier when he reported seeing Bigfoot in the woods near Dansville.
"He got the cops involved and the newspapers wrote about him and TV crews interviewed him.
"Soon, others piped up to say that, indeed, they'd seen it too.
"What a character."

Manitoba Sasquatch Hoaxter

Manitoba Mounties responded to a call near Whiteshell Provincial Park about a creature that scared a camper. From the news:

"'This was further to about 10 calls we had last year of the same incident in the Whiteshell Provincial Park, so the members were aware of the type of person we were looking for,' Staff Sgt. Glen Reitlo told CBC News Wednesday.
"'A couple of our members attended and ended up finding the sasquatch.'
"The creature turned out to be an 18-year-old Winnipeg man wearing a hairy gorilla mask, which Reitlo described as 'ugly' and 'scary.' ...
"Reitlo said the man was not intoxicated when nabbed by officers; he apparently had been camping in the area over the past two summers and simply enjoyed the prank."