"Monsterquest"/Boggy Creek

Last evening, I watched an episode of "Monster Quest" that focused on the area in Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas wherein there have been reports of a critter. (They referred to it as the "swamp stalker" or some such name, but it was obviously in the category of bigfeet.) The program was very much like other such programs that I have watched wherein persons with sightings are allowed to tell their stories and investigators use assorted techniques and equipment to try to obtain evidence of the critter that has been reported. But a couple or three things prompted me to make this post.

FIRST, the reported sightings. I remain, despite the proven unreliability of eye-witness accounts of an event, most convinced that there MAY be a critter out there by the reported sightings--reports by a variety of people who, under ordinary circumstances and dealing with ordinary things, would be considered very credible. The several programs that I have watched of the nature of this one all seem to have several of these believeable people. (That includes "Bigfootville," a program that, in many ways left a lot to be desired. I still think that that big Indian--wasn't he Seminole--was pulling that Tulsa TV personality's leg and got a good laugh out of it afterward.)

SECOND, the somewhat varied but generally consistent descriptions of the unknown species: ape-like, bipedal, tall and massively built, black or dark red hair....

THIRD, the consistently reported colors of black or dark red. For many years, I raised and rode Appaloosa horses, and I became somewhat knowledgeable of color genetics. It surprises many people to say this, but it is true that all horses are either black, which is the dominant, or red, which is the recessive. ALL other variations in color are the result of some gene other than the basic color gene acting to modify the black or red. For instance, a dun/buckskin Appaloosa is a black horse with the bay gene with the dun/delution gene with the Appaloosa spotting gene, but underneath those genetic layers, he is still a black horse! It seems quite reasonable to me to think that a critter like bigfoot would have the basic color genes for black and red and be some variation of one color or the other.