cryptid

08AUG25

the smartest being on the planet

do not assume
bigfoot looks like an ape
if he had a costume 
it would have a cape

as the information grows 
and we take off the lid 
it seems we do not know
what we think we did

we walk the same ground 
see the same stars
bigfoot doesn't seem to be bound
by the same rules that we are
 
seem to be discovering 
more than meets the eye
what is that hovering
in the night sky

search the info we've got
have to carefully scan it
what if we're not 
the smartest being on the planet

I am not going to Hocking Hills Bigfoot Festival. I still need to put together the 200 plus photos and videos that I took of people mostly in bigfoot t-shirts at Red River Gorge Bigfoot Fest 2025 into a you tube slide show. They are now in a link in the Bigfoot section of the drop down menu.

I am intending to do a play on words involving Ernest Hemingway on one of my brother’s farm videos that I am working on. When I was googling Hemingway I was wonderfully surprised when another literary giant’s name popped up. The loquacious Ernest T. Bass from the Andy Griffith Show once again made me smile. I loved every episode of Mayberry. It is even mentioned in our Manifesto. But the episodes with the poetic ramblings and rock throws of Mr. Bass were truly something special.

I am pretty sure that my writing style is more Bass than Hemingway. And I have often told people that my poetry is probably much more influenced by Ernest T. Bass than by Shakespeare. But I will have to admit that I have always been blown away by the fact that the writer was born with that last name. There seems to be so much meaning and symbolism wrapped up in that name. It conjures up images of the strength and the power of the pen and the ability to move and craft with it.

Over the years I have been surprised when Ernest T. Bass’s name would pop up in conversations. It happened a couple of weeks ago when we were having a conversation on the street about beagles. One of the men that I was speaking with recounted with great pride how that one of his family’s beagles had been named Ernest T. Bass.

As a matter of fact Ernest T. and bigfoot share a few attributes. They both posses incredible strength. They are both able to seemingly disappear. They are both known for their rock throwing. They both seem to occasionally emerge from the mountains. They are both incredibly entertaining. They both seem to exist in the land of legends.

(As I was proofreading this post after I had already published it I had a thought that made me giggle. I wonder how many people will read this and think to themselves “He left out the fact that they are both fictional characters.”)

I have read before about how many people count the episodes of Mayberry with Ernest T. Bass in them as their favorites. It is hard to believe that he was in only 5 episodes.

I guess it just goes to show that you should never underestimate the charm and lingering effects of a man from the mountains. And in the words of Smokey Robinson and Al Cleveland bigfoot seconds that emotion.