On November 30, 1989, aliens stole Linda Napolitano from her sleep, setting off one of the most extraordinary and harrowing cases in the abduction canon. This event promised to upend all that researchers thought they knew. As Budd Hopkins put it in his book on the case, Witnessed: The True Story of the Brooklyn Bridge UFO Abductions, "This abduction event so drastically alters our knowledge of the alien incursion in our world that it is easily the most important in recorded history." (p. XIV-1)
Alternately, Napolitano was a quick-witted attention-seeker and/or was enabled by some of the biggest names in ufology, which is no less important.
Amber's coworker at the garden center moved a rodent nest. When the babies crawled over his hand, he reacted with a terror only fractionally removed from pesticide.
Amber says, "The mother" -- a fiend who had nibbled the heads of the sunflowers in the greenhouse -- "won't be able to find them if I move them, right?" They meant this as a question but only wanted me to assure them it was true. My spouse is not one given to questions for which they have already established the answer.
I tell them I can't know that, but I have my doubts the mother would bother recovering missing pups (or whatever the proper term for baby mice is) when she exists in a world of month-long gestation; there is always another brood to rear, and most baby rodents in the wild do not make it to their quick adulthood.
They ask if they should leave the babies there or catch them and bring them to our home. I cannot tell my spouse to leave babies to die of starvation.It is beyond their character to allow nature to be apathetically cruel.
Beatty is a short, blonde woman with a welcoming voice and demeanor. She runs a local bait shop, Hook Line & Sinker, when she is not investigating the local Bigfoot population, being interviewed, or attending Bigfoot events -- which are much less of a rarity than the hoi polloi might anticipate. Her fieldwork only sometimes requires her to hike into the dark of strange wood, as she has a habitation site in the undeveloped property behind her house. The shop, also the headquarters of Bigfoot Researchers of the Hudson Valley, is not far from neighbors, down the road from the Red Hook Elks Lodge #2022 and within a mile of the elementary, middle, and high school, as well as Market Street, the main road that crosses Route 9 and which turns into Route 199. The site is likewise close to Bard College, though, to my knowledge, no liberal arts major has mentioned a run-in with ape-men.
Emily Fleur began her well-rehearsed presentation by asking if the audience in this packed pub realizes Patty, the nickname for the star of the precedent-setting 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage, was female. As it had pendulous breasts and Bigfoots are not a subject on which I am unversed, I nodded. I might have been in small company tonight. There is an air of Girl Power to this question, something Fleur herself exemplifies. The Bigfoot art for her organization's website and printed materials keep the breasts intact, which one sees almost nowhere else in the cryptozoological world. What does it mean that the archetype of our most famous cryptid is widely misgendered? (Sorry, Nessie. You are too geographically locked for widespread appeal. Mothman? What bridge collapses have you warned us about lately?)
Standing behind a plastic table at the Barn Taproom in Red Hook, New York, Fleur wore a lime green top, stretch jeans, and a fanny pack. The latter is utilitarian tonight, carrying money to make change later. In most photographs, she dresses as if for a safari photo shoot, in practical khaki and boots, but fashionably so. Fleur would not be photographed coated in sweat and mud, which is not to say this does not result from her fieldwork--she is no slouch--but that she corrects any smudges before the photos are snapped. She has an image to maintain, and sponsors like Manscaped and Bigfoot Bushcraft (who have paid for her posts) do not make a habit of giving money to messy women.
The French have a saying that, in every relationship, there is one who kisses and one who offers their cheek to be kissed. Someone always loves more than the other, in plainer words.
We talk a good game about balance, but balance happens maybe twice a year. Our sins and graces, the grudges we ought to have let go, the tiny miracles that animate us; the ledger of our lives rarely zeroes out. Though sometimes, when we barely expect it, when we have thrown caution to the wind and decided that we won't look at the bottom line before signing our name, everything works out to the penny.
Emily Fleur began her well-rehearsed presentation by asking if the audience in this packed pub realizes Patty, the nickname for the star of the precedent-setting 1967 Patterson-Gimlin footage, was female. As it had pendulous breasts and Bigfoots are not a subject on which I am unversed, I nodded. I might have been in small company tonight. There is an air of Girl Power to this question, something Fleur herself exemplifies. The Bigfoot art for her organization's website and printed materials keep the breasts intact, which one sees almost nowhere else in the cryptozoological world. What does it mean that the archetype of our most famous cryptid is widely misgendered? (Sorry, Nessie. You are too geographically locked for widespread appeal. Mothman? What bridge collapses have you warned us about lately?)
A not insubstantial portion of my writing accouterments were gifts, things I would not have bought for myself and which I am, therefore, too guilty not to incorporate into my regular writing practice. Otherwise, aren't I being ungrateful?
Outside this, I have bought myself things that might, if one squints one's eyes, look like the necessities of the craft but are impractically pretty and, though functional, may be meant to be admired and not used often.
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