I was listening to the Radiolab podcast on Colors the other day and thought I came up with the most important scientific epiphany of all time. See, us humans have three color receptors in our eyes, red, green and blue (or yellow, I forget exactly), and those working in concert allow us to see the millions and millions of shades we see. Seems like lots, right? But other animals have more, some have 6, and mantis shrimp even have some crazy number like 18 of them. Well, listen to the podcast because obviously I am garbling some of the details. But here's what I immediately realized:

The reason why we've never seen a sasquatch is their fur is in the colors we can not perceive! Obviously!

I was composing my Nobel acceptance speech in my head when I realized the flaw in my reasoning. Okay, there's probably more than one, but right away you can see that even if their fur was colored something we can't see, the light reaching us would still be blocking out the background behind them, so they would still appear as some other color. Brown, maybe. Dogs can still see us, even though they are colorblind (though not completely, as they have two color-rods in their eyes, rather than our three). So yeah. Oh well.

I've been neglecting quite a few things lately, and not least among them is sasquatches. I've been mildly obsessed with them my whole life but have hardly given them a thought since my daughter was born. Today when I was driving home from Hinton I saw two bipedal figures cutting across a farmer's field. They were farmers, of course. But it's entirely possible that they were also sasquatches. It's not often you see two sasquatches so close to the highway like that. Were they a mated pair? A mama and a child, like a bear sow and cub? It's hard to say for sure. And were they migrating back north after the winter? Not much is known about the migration patterns of bigfoots. All these mysteries. I guess I could have stopped and taken some pictures but I know sasquatches are way more fun with a little mystique. As soon as you capture one and give it a latin name it's all over. Well, that would still be cool. What should its latin name be? Sasquatch sasquatchus, probably. Homo horribilis would be cool too.

In the tradition of last year's Love Poem, With Robots, I give you a brand new ode to the most beautiful woman in the world. I call it

Homie Bear Versus the Sasquatch

Homie Bear was trying to write a poem for his Mrs
A ‘Be Mine, Valentine’ with lots of hugs and kisses
But writing unbad love poetry isn’t very easy
It’s hard to avoid the clichés that always makes them cheesy
Suddenly a scary creature broke into the house
Ignoring Homie the monster went directly for his spouse
It grabbed Michelle and left the house, leaving Homie in it
Total time for this shocking crime was well under a minute
Homie was stunned- “That stupid sasquatch just came and stole my sweety
“In clear violation of the Bilateral Bear and Bigfoot treaty!”
Homie Bear immediately stopped working on his sonnet
His wife would need a rescue promptly so he got right on it
He ran outside and there in the snow was a talking Cupid’s Arrow
It said to Homie “Follow me I’ll keep you on the Straight and Narrow”
He climbed a mountain and swam an ocean and ignored some wild horses
Who for unknown reasons tried to make him go off on wrong courses
Eventually he came upon the secret sasquatch cave
Where he fought the biggest Bigfoot there by being very brave
He roared and growled and clawed and bit
Until the sasquatch had enough of it
It cried and panicked and ran away
So ole Homie won the fray
He hugged his wife and took her home
Where he read to her his poem:
Roses are red and violets are blue
I’d fight a savage sasquatch for you!

Michelle always kisses me goodbye before she leaves for work. Yesterday I woke up just as she approached, and I must've been still dreaming or something because for whatever reason I freaked out and went, "Aaahh!" Not exactly a scream, but definitely a yelp. I startled her so she yelped too. Kind of embarrassing- scared of my own wife.
I don't normally scare that easy, unless you're talking sasquatches. Well, not so much anymore. When I was a kid, though, as long time readers might recall, ole Bigfoot kind of gave me the heebiejeebies. But I'm looking forward to a good scare when Viper Comics releases Sasquatch in April. Check out its promotional blog, showcasing artwork from the 250-page graphic anthology, which features the work of David Hartman, Otis Frampton and many others.

The Mystery of the Sasquatch
by Little Homie Bear

My report about mammals is about sasquatches, who are giant apes or cavemen or something that lives in the woods and mountains of North America. Also their cousin the yeti who some people call the abomable snowman who lives in the Himalayas mountains in Nepal and Tibet, which are two countries very far away from here where they have Mt Everest the tallest mountain in the world.
Anyways, there is very little known about these mysterious denizens of the primodial forest. Some scientists even claim that there isn't a such a thing as a bigfoot (which is what some people call sasquatches because of their big feet). But I don't know how they can say that when they also say that they have an uncertainty principal. But what IS known about the sasquatches is they are undoubtedly very big. Hopefully they eat plants and berries and not bears, but I think they don't because otherwise we would see more of them I think and have more fights. And I don't want to fight with these mythical beasts who might be from the Ice Age. Other animals that are from the Ice Age are the woolly mammoth, and I bet that the sasquatches rode on woolly mammoths.
The End

The mystery of the sasquatch fascinates me- I even wrote this touching paean to them. But I'm not one to get too excited about the latest "Caught on Film! " exclusive scoop of fuzzy, out-of-focus blobs that are probably either a bear or a guy out walking his dog. The latest example has been getting some coverage in the media, though I don't know why- it isn't that impressive (and I am being generous). But at least it has gotten me thinking about the subject again. Obviously a large primate prowling undiscovered in our backyards is an intriguing concept. But it's always something that's larger than life, you know? Aliens, Loch Ness monsters, angels, . . . maybe some or all of these things are real, and that'd be great if they were. I'd love it if someone proved there were real sasquatches. But since you can't prove that something doesn't exist, there will always be rumours, even if there is no such thing. Why aren't there ever rumours and fuzzy videos of a new species of rodent- maybe a polar porcupine, say, or a brown skunk or something? These things just aren't enough to incite the public imagination I guess.
In the meantime, though, there are all sorts of astonishing things happening out there- just last week they found an ivory-billed woodpecker after they were thought to be extinct for the last 40 years or so. Pretty cool. Or a new species of dinosaur that seems to show an evolutionary transition from carnivore to herbivore. Not to mention that whole Homo florensis discovery in Indonesia.
The other week at work I saw a grizzly, probably the closest I have ever been to one (aside from looking in the mirror I guess ;), and that was pretty damn cool. My point? If there are sasquatches out there, fantastic. But the world has more than enough wonder in it even without them.
(art by gloriouskyle, used with permission)

The mystery of Bigfoot will probably be solved one day with these words:

It turns out that sasquatches were just robots built by bears, possibly with the help of aliens.

Another non-rhymey poem for you:

Sasquatch

You prowl in the night
Hidden and unseen
No one knows if you're real
And if you are
are you friendly?
Or mean?
You don't eat bears do you?
I hope not
And I hope you can levitate
and turn invisible
and heal sickness with a glance
But maybe that's only if you're Russian

Russian sasquatches.
"Some researchers believe that people's hairy neighbors can not only hypnotize, but also levitate, become invisible or cure any diseases with a glance. There are even more fantastic hypotheses saying that yetis are wood-goblins, demons or some beings from the parallel world. Unfortunately, there is not single evidence proving any of the fantastic suggestions. "
It was an interesting and thought-provoking article until the subject moved away from Russian Sasquatches to Invisible Flying Sasquatches from Dimension X!