Maybe this NE "big foot" is just someone who cant buy his shoes at Bata :P. Here's the story about the US big foot (one of the big foots, I should add ) - Myth target=_blank>http://home.clara.net/rfthomas/news/marion.html Myth of Marion County's Bigfoot revealed By Hal Hatfield "Bigfoot" has not come back to live in the woods on the outskirts of Harvey. He never left. He has been living there all his life — in a house, not a den or cave. Certainly he has been hanging around for the last 25 years since he became a sensation in the Iowa media in the winter of 1978. After all these years, Bigfoot has decided to tell his story. Harvey Postmistress Catherine Van Waardhuizen was driving to her home near an old railroad trestle near Harvey on Feb. 20, 1978, when she spied what the newspapers described as 20-inch-long, eight-inch-wide foot prints in the deep snow. She went on home and told her son and daughter-in-law, Jill and Jerry Van Waardhuizen, and their two daughters about the tracks. The skeptical Jill and Jerry Van Waardhuizen took their daughters to see the foot prints and were surprised by three-foot distance between the prints, the absence of boot treads in the tracks and the lack of scuff marks in the snow where a foot should have dragged when taking a step. Jill Van Waardhuizen said she could not explain the tracks. If someone made the tracks as a hoax, she said, he would have had to walk on stilts to get through the deep snow in such long strides while leaving so few skuff marks between the tracks. According to a report in the Knoxville Journal under the headline "Does a 'Bigfoot' prowl through the woods near Harvey?", Cliff Worthington, also of Harvey, followed the tracks further, and found where the track-maker had crossed a high barbed-wire fence and a place at the base of the railroad bridge where it looked like the creature had lain down to rest. There was even a packed patch of snow that appeared to have been made by the head of whatever it was as it lay there. Shirley McCombs of Harvey later found a tuft of hair on the barbed wire where the track-maker had hurdled the fence. Yet another Harvey resident, Glen Visser, called by the Knoxville Journal "the most determined tracker," took up the trail carrying his .22 rifle, but gave up after concluding he was following the tracks the wrong way. Visser said he became confused by the deep and blowing snow. He said he would rather believe it was some big human out walking. "One tracker isn't offering opinions," the newspaper said of Visser. Other area residents reported personal encounters with a Bigfoot and Matt Ver Steeg, a KNIA announcer and southern Iowa director of Bigfoot Research Inc., was quoted that there had been earlier Bigfoot sightings near Oskaloosa and Pella. The Journal said Ver Steeg said he had personally met a Bigfoot. Ver Steeg explained that "Bigfoot is a primate, but an animal — not some 'missing link.' The animal tends to establish a territory and frequents the same areas, providing its food supply remains fairly constant." Ver Steeg said Bigfoot was primarily a vegetarian and his diet might consist of bark, left-over corn, soybeans, any kind of berries and roots. "It may turn to stealing livestock if its more staple foods become scarce," he said. He asked "anyone who has been hearing anything unusual, such as howls, yells, screams or grunts" to contact him. The winter of 1977-1978 had been a long, cold and snowy one, and Glen Visser had cabin fever. There was an accumulation of about three feet of snow, with a new fall of a fluffy few inches. Visser was in good shape, working out regularly and jogging when he could. So he strapped on a pair of military snow shoes — each about 24 inches long and a foot wide — and went for a run in the snow. Catherine Van Waardhuizen went home for lunch and the rest is Bigfoot history. Bigfoot was in the Harvey woods. The snowshoes made the oversized tracks and Visser was jogging so the interval between the tracks was exaggerated. He picked his feet up and put them straight down — no scuff marks. The wind was blowing the snow — no tread marks. The snow was so deep that the barbed-wire fence was no barrier. "I could step right over it," he says. After packing down the snow by the trestle so that it looked as if Bigfoot had lain down, Visser took off the snowshoes and went home. He later realized that there were no Bigfoot foot prints leaving from beneath the bridge, so his wife Jeannine drove him back with the snowshoes to make more tracks. His daughter Kathy took a tuft of hair from an old bearskin and attached it to the fence. After the tracks were discovered, there were several attempts to track Bigfoot, including Visser's own failed attempt. "The next day there were about a thousand cars down there," Visser said. "It was just a great time. I really enjoyed it. There had been other Bigfoot sightings in Iowa and that might have prompted me to do it." Visser also admits climbing a nearby bluff and howling like a wolf, sending dogs in the area into a frenzy. A year later, the Knoxville Journal observed the first anniversary of the discovery of Bigfoot's tracks by noting that there had been no more sightings. Kevin Cook, director of Bigfoot Research Inc. of Iowa, said that the winter of 1978-1979 had been colder than the previous one and theorized Bigfoot might have moved further south. Samples of hair from the fence were determined to be from a cow. Visser and his family have kept Bigfoot's identity a secret for 26 years, so why confess now? "I didn't want to die without telling," he says. Among his newspaper clippings is one about a California man, Ray Wallace, who pulled a similar prank many years ago by making footprints of a Bigfoot with carved pieces of wood. He also filmed his wife in an ape costume to create a "sighting." Among the photos was a pregnant Bigfoot and Bigfoot eating frogs. It was only after Wallace's death at age 86 that his family revealed the secret. "He did it for a joke and he was afraid to tell anyone because they'd be so mad at him," Wallace's nephew said. The legend of Bigfoot — or Yeti or Sasquatch or Almas or the Abominable Snowman or any of many other names — goes back into history. A check of Google on the Internet reveals 1,160,000 hits under "bigfoot." One web site lists sightings in every state except Hawaii. California has had 263 sightings. Another site lists 21 sightings in Iowa, dating back to 1869. According to one web site, Bigfoot came out of the woods the same 1978-1979 winter at the Pella Bridge near Harvey, gazed at a 10-year-old boy, and then retreated back into the woods. In 2000, a duck hunter and his son spotted Bigfoot three miles south of Pella. He was tall, had white fur and ran very quickly. Visser does not seem worried that folks will be mad at him now that his secret is out. He says Bigfoot was able to liven up the cold, snowy winter in Harvey. "People really wanted to believe in Bigfoot," he said. Visser is 69 now, but he still works out, still jogs, is still in good shape. He and his wife rode in RAGBRAI for 17 straight years and are avid trail riders. He probably could still negotiate the barbed-wire fence if the snow were deep enough. Much of the woods where Bigfoot roamed in 1978 is now crop land. But there is still plenty of room for imagination...and hopefully still some people who really want to believe. From: Journal-Express/The Reminder, 8 March 2004.