Bigfoot Continues to Fool

A couple days ago was April Fools Day. As usual, there were several local papers trying to get in on the gag, most of them wimping out in the last lines of their story with "Surprise...April Fools Day!" But not the Bastrop Daily Enterprise. They published a 1st person story about a Bigfoot sighting on the banks of the Bonne Idee, complete with a tacky, photoshopped picture.
Bigfoot on Bonne Idee?

A Morehouse Parish woman claims to have had a chance encounter with the elusive creature known as Bigfoot -- and she has the photo to prove it.
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The Bigfoot was just starting to get out of the water as she approached the bank. Although frightened, the witness says she snapped the accompanying photo. The creature turned around as though startled, then ran along the bank of the bayou.
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"We tell people not to worry, that Bigfoot is just as scared of you as you are of him," said Tubbs. "We don't really follow up on those calls because you can't always believe what people tell you when April Fool's Day rolls around."

But the real story is from the next day's headlines.

Bigfoot Backlash: Sighting Story Creates Quite a Stir
Yesterday's story about a "sighting" of bigfoot on the banks of Bayou Bonne Idee apparently evaded quite a few folks.
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I walked over to the sheriff's office later in the morning and told Danny McGrew and Mike Tubbs about the call. Danny said he'd heard people all over town asking questions yesterday like, "Who do you think it was that saw it?" Someone said they'd overheard people at a local convenience store talking about the "sighting" when one of the participants said, "Now someone else has seen it."
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About midafternoon, Capt. Alan Bankston with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries -- who agreed to take part in the ruse -- called and asked if I wanted "to make a contribution to help them get a new file cabinet for all the bigfoot sightings" that had been reported to his office in Monroe since the story broke. Then he spoke an absolute truth.

"People want to believe in it sooooo bad," he said.

Thinking out loud in the newsroom that we've got to do a follow up to the joke, Wes tells me the story and photo have been posted on two Websites apparently hosted by people who really believe in Sasquatch. One of the sites even said our story "... is written as fact, without any hint of fakery."

The purposely poor job we did putting bigfoot in the photo that went with the story should have been the first clue. If that wasn't enough, Wes put the perfect ending on the story, quoting Tubbs saying, "We don't really follow up on those calls because you can't always believe what people tell you when April Fool's Day rolls around."

Bankston was spot on with his assessment of the activity that followed the faux story. Why do people want to believe that huge, hairy man-ape creatures roam the wilderness or that spaceships are zooming around the third rock from the sun?

Beats me? But it's sure fun to pick on them.

It sure is. But it's also a little disturbing to think some people can still be that simple minded.