Making Sense of Nonsense

I've always believed that bigfoot existed because my father had a sighting when he was ten years old and several other family stories, that on hind sight, could be attributed to bigfoot. However, bigfoot was something that existed out in the remote wilderness, my frame of reference for their habitat didn't include urban and suburban areas. Until the last few years, my interest went as far as watching the occasional documentary about bigfoot until I moved to my present home here in South Carolina.
    It wasn't too long before it dawned on me that many odd things happen when living on a river. I had never been lucky enough to be able to buy a place on a body of water. I was thrilled to find my condo with the magnificent view of the Broad River on the outskirts of a small city back in 2008. No scenic vacation spot  that I have since visited equals what I have in my own backyard. That said, the strangeness begin my first night in my new home.
    Do I have proof that bigfoot is behind it all? Does anyone ever? Usually not enough to convince the world, but after the last few years, I do have enough proof to convince myself. There is a small community of researchers and enthusiasts doing their very best to try and prove to mainstream science that this creature exists. Far be it for me to think I can accomplish what no one else has been able to do in decades, but I'm going to give it whirl. I might make an ass of myself in the process but it won't be the first time. We can all have a good laugh at my delusions and epic fails along the way.
   Proof began to arrive for me on October 26th, 2011. My brother, who happens to be my neighbor, had been having a visitor that raided his ash tray on his deck for cigarette butts for well over a year. Each time the ash tray was moved, butts were scattered everywhere, and his storage room door would be open. Sometimes a pile of duck down would be left, or beer pull tabs, once a lovely red glass star shaped planter. After he received the beautiful planter this past July, I decided to leave this visitor a whole cigarette. The cigarettes would be missing but you were never certain whether an animal or the weather was responsible.

      I continued my game and like clock work every 3-4 weeks, the bait would be taken. The last gift of tobacco was left before we departed for a trip to Pennsylvania to check out our first Bigfoot/UFO conference. This time, I decided to leave our visitor a sign. I placed a bigfoot refrigerator magnet on top of the clear plastic cover over the cigarette. When I checked the offering after we returned, the cigarette was missing, the magnet was placed with a smaller clear plastic cover over it and standing upright. Now I knew without a doubt that an animal or weather was not responsible for taking the bait. Something with fingers arranged the magnet and covered it as the magnet was not designed to stand and was balanced on uneven deck boards. I already suspected that it must be something unusual since the deck is a good six feet off the ground with no ground access. In order to get to the ashtray and storage room door one would have to reach over the air conditioning unit and around through the deck banister to reach the door knob. It just did not seem likely that a human could do this without making a lot noise in the process. Then I found the prints on the beach and along the river on my hike the next Sunday.

So thrilled as I was by all of this, I reached out to some of the researchers in the community for advice. Knowing something with fingers is sneaking up to your deck at night is not very reassuring regardless of who or what it is, at this point it was time to get a little more aggressive.  It has taken almost two years for this creature/person to develop a habit for visiting. I don't want to do anything in the process that will scare it off  while trying to figure out what he/she/it is exactly. I'll probably only have one shot at this and I have to get it right the first time. I feel like I'm planning to go to war although no weapons will be involved, the only casualty will be trust. I will keep you posted as the project evolves.
The Wednesday after my hike  my brother had an unnerving incident shortly after lunch, I had come home but left to go back to work. He went out on his deck a little after 1:00pm to water his plants when he heard stomping and huffing coming up from the river bottom. Then trees began to crash, at this point every dog in the neighborhood is barking. So my brother tried a whoop. The tree smashing stops, he tries another with no result. Next try was an owl call and what or whoever it was returned another owl call in answer as it continued south down the river. It couldn't have made it very far as there is a construction crew rebuilding a bridge south of us. My thought was that our visitor was caught between us and that activity, forced to wait it out until nightfall. At the time this did not occur to me as I raced down to the river bottom to get my pictures of the damage, my proof that none of this was our imagination. The first photo is a suspected footprint found on the game trail, then pics of several broken and damaged trees, followed by what I thought might be a hand print. Then a log that was freshly rolled over. Maybe this creature was looking for termites or grubs, I don' t know. All I can say is these trees were intact when I walked there Sunday, we've had no storms or floods, you be the judge: