Trail of Bones: More Cases from the Files of a Forensic Anthropologist

7. They Walk Among Us

They Walk Among Us ANY strange cases have made their way to my laboratory over the years. Some are a little stranger than others. In the fall of 20011 received a rather unusual phone call just before my morning class one day. The detective on the other end of the line sounded patient and experienced but a little concerned. "Miss Mary," he said, "I've got a situation I need a little help with." After that, his story quickly entered the category "only in Louisiana," which I reserve for cases that defy logic and whose participants are surely candidates for the Darwin Awards (given, the awards' Web site says, to "salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally kill themselves in really stupid ways"). A hunter had called the sheriff's office the day before and relayed his tale. He was walking in the deep woods, he told the detective, and had headed toward a little creek bed he knew very well to see if any deer tracks could point him toward the prize buck that he always thought was just around the bend. The squirrels and blue jays were not about their usual business of chattering and squawking over territorial boundaries. In fact, he noted, an unusual calm had spread all across the forest as he quietly made his way down to the creek bed. He peered cautiously around two small yaupon hedges for a quick look-see into the dry creek. It was then that he saw it, immediately adjacent to hoofprints made by a deer that had traveled that way recently: another print in the soil—a large print, a very large print, more than a foot long and five or six inches wide, made by a manlike creature that had traveled that way about the M 7 They Walk Among Us 59 same time as the deer. "Manlike creature" was a good description, the hunter continued, but it was not man. It had only four toes, four very large toes. Also, something on a nearby bush caught the light of the morning sun and glistened black against the fall foliage: hairs, long, black hairs, not human hairs. The hunter touched nothing but marked the spot, quickly retreated from the forest, and drove his truck to the nearest phone to call the sheriff's office. "Bigfoot is in Kisatchie Forest," he told the dispatcher. "Yeah, sure," the dispatcher replied, "and Chicken Little says the sky is falling." "Please come," the hunter yelled. The sheriff's detective who got the case knew that he had better check it out because he figured die hunter had not called just the sheriffs office. By the time the detective and crime scene personnel neared the location described by the hunter, clouds of dust were billowing everywhere. Obviously , the hunter had told his friends. The detective knew he had to do something because he had been raised with these guys and they were as trigger-happy as they come. He worried that they would end up shooting each other. He explained to me that he had gone to the site, made an impression of the footprint (FIGURE 6), and collected the hairs. Could I give him an opinion on the hairs and footprint? "Sure," I told him, "but Bigfoot is clearly out of my area of expertise ." He laughed, probably for the first time that day. "Miss Mary," he said, "I know it's not Bigfoot. I just need some science to show these locals. Why, I've had calls from all across the country already. National news people are on their way down here right now. It's a zoo, I tell you. So what do you need?" "I need the hairs and I need to see the footprint." "That reminds me," he said. "The footprint was right next to a big log, and the print was only an inch or two deep." "Go on," I said, noting only a short pause in his thoughts. "A few feet awaywere fresh deer tracks. They sank down in that creek bed at least three or more inches." 60 TRAIL OF BONES FIGURE 6. Footprint cast of "Bigfoot" "Are you trying to tell me that Bigfoot is very light on his feet?" He laughed again. "Something like that," he chuckled. He got to my office within a couple of hours. I would love to have seen his speedometer...