Freedom Tower

With construction completed in 1925, the Freedom Tower was originally built as the headquarters for the Miami News newspaper. But in 1957, the paper relocated to a new facility the U.S. government decided to use the building to process refugees from Cuba fleeing the Castro regime. The government sold the building to private buyers in 1974, after the numbers of incoming refugees began to dwindle.

Now it's a multi-purpose museum, cultural center, educational center, and much more. The MDC Museum of Art + Design is on the second floor and is free and open to the public, and works by Dali, Goya and DaVinci have been displayed here in conjunction with Miami Dade College.

Oh yeah, and it's lit up really cool at night.

University of Florida Zombie Attack Plan

Though it's clearly done in jest, it does give one pause to consider that the University of Florida has, on its official website, a page advising students what to do if a zombie attack occurs on campus. A number of other serious organizations, including FEMA and the CDC, have held mock "zombie attack drills" as a way of framing the idea of emergency preparedness in a hipster kinda way, what with the popularity of zombies in popular culture like The Walking Dead.

But what is a zombie, really, and is the term being floated in a way meant to condition citizens for a day when the streets really are filled with shuffling, insane, dangerous freaks who have lost their souls and lost their minds and can no longer be reasoned with?

We already live in a world where the IQ of humanity has demonstratably already hit its peak in the 1950s and 1960s and is now in decline. A world where, like that of the film Idiocracy, it's becoming harder and harder in our current civilization to find safe and sane people who can follow the plot of a comic book without getting confused. Things are already falling apart but no one's paying much attention. We're all being dulled by a whirlwind of toxins hurled at us from all directions - fluoride, cosmic rays, radioactive materials, mercury-tainted vaccines, GMOs, high fructose corn syrup, car exhaust, Big Pharma's antidepressants, street drugs, Chinese drywall, hydrogen sulfide, and who knows what else. Throw in a crumbling economy and you've really got the recipe for an "Us vs. Them" future.

Stay frosty out there, kids.

The Pizza Joint

What you see here, friends, is the most splendiferous Philly Cheesesteak it has ever been my honor to push down my hillbilly gullet. And it didn't come from Philly; it came from - of all places - Pinellas Park, Florida.

How is that possible? I don't even know. I don't ask questions. I just call in my order to The Pizza Joint and pick it up.

Their lasagna is flawless, their pizza is top-notch, their manicotti magnificent - but it's the cheesesteak sammitch that keeps me coming back to Pinellas Park, again and again and again. I won't always be stationed in Florida, and when the day comes that I'm somewhere far, far away, I will look back in hunger and think fond thoughts of these amazing globs of bread and cheese and meat surely from the very hand of the almighty.

Gainesville Nightlife, 1975-1985

I get the impression that Gainesville was not exactly the swingin'est of places back in the day. Either that or the truly cool saloons, nightclubs, cabarets and late-night joints didn't bother advertising in the paper.

Skull Kingdom

One of Orlando's late great lamented vanished tourist attractions is Skull Kingdom, a castle fronted by an enormous skull on International Drive. It opened in 1993 and closed in 2007, and was your basic walk-through "spook house" where families strolled around in trepidation as strobe lights flashed and stuff exploded and people in costumes jumped out and went ooga-booga. Other entities have tried to pick up Skull Kingdom's fallen torch and carry on the tradition, like Terror In Orlando, 3D Funhouse and Mayhem Manor, but just as science has proven you cannot mold some other random bald guy into a replacement for Curly in the Three Stooges, you cannot recreate the low-budget glory and grandeur that was once Skull Kingdom.

But thanks to the magic of YouTube, 33 minutes of raw footage of Skull Kingdom in its heyday, filmed by a production crew for a TV commercial, can be viewed here.

The Barefoot Mailman

Located at 1210 Hillsboro Mile in Hillsboro Beach, a statue stands of a barefoot mailman. Why? Because in the late 19th century there were eleven barefoot mailmen who trudged along the beaches between Palm Beach and Miami to deliver the mail. Roads were very poor in those days, and taking the shortcut up the coast seemed like a preferable route at the time. However, it wasn't as easy as a seashell searching stroll: approximately 28 miles of the "barefoot route" required postal carriers to row more than one boat to get to their destination. All this just so some guy in Lemon City could send a "Wish you were here" Florida postcard to his cousin Sylvia in Weehawken.

There are actually three barefoot mailman statues; another is in Pompano Beach and the other can be found on the Coast Guard's Hillsboro Inlet Light Station to commemorate the mysterious disappearance of James "Ed" Hamilton, who had moved to Florida from his original home of Cadiz, Kentucky.

In 1887, Hamilton vanished while he was out attempting the swift completion of his appointed rounds and the mystery has never been explained. Hamilton's possessions, including all of his clothes, were found neatly laid out on the north bank of the Hillsboro Inlet. The rowboat that he had used to cross the inlet was missing.

It has been speculated that alligators got him, but his body was never recovered and why he had removed his clothes remains a mystery.

There are antiquated reports that a "stranger from the north", no name given, was charged with stealing Hamilton's boat and tried in Federal Court in Jacksonville. As per the custom of the time, the man's name was never publicly released or entered in the record because he was found innocent. What really happened out there? We may never know now.

In addition to the statues, there's a historical marker about the barefoot mailmen located in Boca Raton. Curiously, it lists Hamilton as having drowned, which is really only conjecture on someone's part.

Largest Yellowjacket Nest?

Saw on NBC tonight about what may be the largest yellowjacket nest ever, discovered under a home in Winter Haven, FL. Says here:

Ruthie Smarte's son first noticed the nest behind her Winter Haven home in March. At the time, it seemed small and nonthreatening, so they thought little of it.

But two of Smarte's cats eventually became apparent victims of the insects as the nest kept growing and growing, and the family realized they needed to do something.

"This thing got big real quick," said Fred Smarte, who worried the bugs could get into the house and attack his mother.

Exterminators from Florida Pest Control arrived at the house Friday to find a nest they said was the largest ever found at a home in the company's 65-year history. It contained between 15,000 and 35,000 yellow jackets and stretched from the crawl space beneath the house outside, where it was fused with an old armchair.

I've been noticing a lot of yellowjackets around here at my current location in sunny Gulfport, and now am doubly watchful for signs of such an infestation. I'm pretty sure the underside of my house and yard is completely owned by Big-headed ants, though.

Jackie Gleason

My dad may know Jackie Gleason as being Ralph Kramden on The Honeymooners, and you may know him as the sheriff in the Smokey & The Bandit movies, but I know him as the man behind a strange series of super-schmaltzy muzak albums in which he neither performed, composed, nor conducted.

In a somewhat Warholian fashion, Gleason organized the recording sessions and had people compose the songs according to his directions. Sometimes he would come up with melodies in his head and hum them to his staff to transcribe; sometimes he merely gave vague instructions in bold strokes, like "make it silky." Most interestingly, as opposed to the increasingly cerebral jazz, Gleason presented his albums as "background music", something to set a mood in a room, not something to be studied or focused on. He actually went so far as to describe it as "musical wallpaper". I found this idea fascinating as a kid when I scored his albums at yard sales. I still do, in fact.

His album Lonesome Echo, by the way, sported cover artwork by none other than Salvador Dali.

Gleason was born in Brooklyn but moved to Miami in the mid-1960s - primarily, it is said, for the golfing. In addition to his many pursuits, he was an avid researcher of the paranormal, and bequeathed his sizeable collection of books and materials to the local university.

His grave can be found at Our Lady Of Mercy Cemetery, 11411 NW 25th Street in Miami.

The Discovery of Phosphate

Sure, there's Disney and there's Legoland, but here's a tourist attraction more my speed: a historical marker commemorating the discovery of phosphate.

It's true! Phosphate was discovered right here in Florida. In a place called Dunnellon. By a guy named Albertus Vogt. Next time that comes up in Trivial Pursuit, by God, you'll be ready.

Dunnellon is not, however, the "Phosphate Center of the World". That title goes to another Florida place called Mulberry, about three hours south of Dunnellon. Why? I'm not sure; mostly because they said so and I had no cause to doubt them.

The sign is, rather annoyingly, placed not at the actual site where Vogt exclaimed, "EUREKA!!" (or "hey, check this out" or whatever one says when one discovers phosphate) but a little further away... well, okay, actually a whole freakin' block away. But let's just be happy the event has a sign at all.

Ray Charles Statue

It seems there's a rivalry going on between Greenville, FL and Albany, GA: they both lay claim to being the birthplace of music legend Ray Charles. Both have statues erected in his honor. Well, you know us here at Report From The Florida Zone, we're choosing Greenville. That's our story and we're stickin' to it.

You'll find the statue in the park on Broad Street in Greenville, by the lake. You can also find Ray's childhood home still preserved in Greenville, on 443 SW Ray Charles Avenue. (Wow, what a coincidence! What are the odds?)

World's Smallest Police Station

If you can find the small town of Carrabelle, FL on the map, you'll find the world's smallest police station.

I know, I know, it looks like a phone booth. And it is. In the 1940s and 50s, the local police had to make calls from a call box mounted on the side of building, outdoors. Meaning, when it was pouring rain, they got soaked. I'm not sure why some better solution to this rather Green Acres situation wasn't contrived earlier, but they finally got the phone company to give them an actual phone booth for their hot line.

The police kept having problems with ordinary citizens wandering into the booth to make phone calls of their own. Rather than put a door with a lock on it, they ended up taking the dial off the phone. Then some nut eventually ripped the phone out completely, and then somewhere down the line somebody finally said, "you know, maybe this has been a really stupid idea."

Since the phone booth was a technically an indoor structure in which policemen conducted official business, this qualified it enough - at least to the local tourism bureau - to call it a police station.

The Third Breast Hoax

Recently I mused here about why on Earth someone would want to have a poorly-done fake third breast permanently surgically attached to their body for such sketchy reasons as "I hope a get a reality show out of it" and "I wanted to make myself unattractive to men." Well, it seems she didn't.

The newsmedia is now reporting a number of problems with her story. WTSP-TV found it odd that in an interview with them, she refused to let the camera have a prolonged look at that very thing she was being interviewed about. She stated that she wanted to save it for this theoretical reality show. But when WTSP did some checking, as journalists are wont to do, they realized that Alisha Hessler (aka "Jasmine Tridevil") had filed a missing-luggage report at Tampa International Airport, listing "three breast prostheses" as the bag's contents.

Though I am no fan of attention-seeking internet hoaxers, I do hope Hessler gets the TV show she dreams of and wish her well.

Stella's Deli

And then there's the casefile of Stella's Deli, an appealing-looking little eatery in Gulfport. Twice have I dined here, and abortively attempted a third. And I still sometimes scratch my head and wonder what went wrong.

Make no mistake about it, the food is excellent. Stella's is one of the very few Florida joints that actually gets up early and serves breakfast for people don't laze around like a slugabed. (Seriously, you'd be surprised just how hard it is to find a morning coffee during the morning around these parts. Good thing the Central Avenue Starbucks opens its doors early, usually about 5am.) I can vouch for their amazing pancakes, and can vouch that their sidewalk seating is a most pleasant place to sit within view of the beach and the Gulfport Casino.

What I can't vouch for is the service. And it's not just the typical lapses in courtesy so common in Florida and so commonly causing me to walk out, it's something stranger, something seemingly... selective.

During each of the three times I have graced Stella's with my presence and my wallet, I was with a date. And we immediately were taken aback by the gruffness, rudeness, and coldness of both our server and the... the... well, whatever you call those people who stand at a podium up front and check seating arrangements.

And then we noticed that seconds after scowling and growling at us, these same employees suddenly did a hard left turn and brightened up into a sunny smile and a cheerful disposition for other customers, greeting them with chatty banter and warmth. Then, back to us, smile vanishes, plates almost dropped hard with a disrespectful thud on the table. And trying to get her attention again to ask for more syrup? Forget about it. Her actually coming back to check on us? Nope.

To be fair - not that I haven't been - another time we tried another place nearby and got the same treatment. I'd like to tell myself that it's just a case of Old Floridians being Old Floridians, turning on the charm for locals and regulars while viewing newcomers and tourists (never mind that I have lived in Florida for a year and a half now, and lived in Gulfport for most of this year) with feral suspicion and snowbird-phobia.

But I remain unconvinced.

Tarpon Springs Sponge Diver Statue

Tarpon Springs is certainly proud of its sponge-diving heritage, and this statue of a diver dressed in an old-fashioned diving suit graces a city street.

But when I see these old-school diving suits, I can't help but think of the anecdote about Salvador Dali, in which he showed up to give a lecture at a university dressed in one of these suits, complete with bolted-on helmet. He launched into his speech oblivious to the fact that no one in the audience could understand him through the helmet. After some minutes of this, Dali realized that his handlers had provided no means for air in the suit, and he was suffocating. He began to make wild gestures, beseeching someone to help him and beating on the helmet, but the audience merely thought it was just part of Dali's surrealist performance-art. Fortunately, someone figured out just in time what was happened, and saved the world's greatest painter from what would have gone down in history as the strangest accidental death of a celebrity ever.

Hatchet Man

Is it another hydrogen sulfide zombie attack, or just a lone nut performing some sort of misplaced act of "stickin' it to the man" and ragin' against the machine? A man in Daytona Beach is accused of wrecking an ATM with an ax, for no discernible reason.

He didn't steal any money from the machine, but he sure bludgeoned the crap out of it. Evidently he was unaware that all ATMs are fitted with security cameras, and it didn't take long for the South Daytona Police Department to track him down. Curiously, he seems to be talking on his cellphone while he smashes the machine. "What is that noise?" "Oh nothing, sorry, just checking my balance... with an hatchet."

The Beer-Flavored Latte

Stop the presses, here's some really big news: Starbucks is experimenting with a beer-flavored latte, and is about to roll this frightening new product out in a trial launch in select Florida locations. Which ones? That has yet to be disclosed. But you can rest assured, dear reader, when the dossier hits my desk, I'll be queueing up at whatever store is selling 'em so I can file a report.

Reportedly, the lattes will be made with, sadly, a non-alcoholic formula (then again, I am not really a fan of mixing caffeine and alcohol - I leave that to the Jagerbomb-sipping zombies among us.) Those who have had advance samples of the product say it does taste remarkably like a Guinness-style stout beer.

Though my Starbucks preference is their iced coffee (year round, even when I lived in Kentucky) I could be convinced to branch out a little more if I find the "Dark Barrel Latte" to be a keeper.

Orchid Island

The Survivors and Salvagers Camp is a historic site located on Orchid Island. It was here that survivors of the 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet disaster washed up ashore, and established a camp while awaiting rescue. Subsequently, Orchid Island was also used by salvagers and sunken treasure seekers, attempting recovery of the 1715 fleet's gold. Currently, the McLarty Treasure Museum occupies part of the area.

The McLarty Treasure Museum (note: that's a pdf file) is located here today, and has many examples of the 1715 fleet's treasure and other artifacts on display.

Orchid Island and North Hutchinson Island are actually the same island, but for reasons foggy with the mists of time the island has different official names in different counties. Technically, by the book, the St. Lucie County part of it is called North Hutchinson Island and the Indian River County portion is called Orchid Island. However, nowadays, virtually everyone everywhere refers to it as Orchid Island.

Triple Breasted Masseuse

So the media is all abuzz today about Jasmine Tridevil, a Tampa massage therapist who recently obtained a third breast after a long search for a surgeon willing to perform the surgery.

"It was really hard finding someone that would do it, too, because they’re breaking the code of ethics," she's quoted as saying, "I called, like, 50 or 60 doctors, nobody wanted to do it." Whatever doctor she did find to do it is probably less than happy that she's reminding the world that he violated the code of ethics - even though she says the surgery is "off the record" with a non-disclosure contract.

Why did she want a third breast? Apparently it's a gimmick that Tridevil hopes will help her to launch a television reality show about herself. She has, according to news sources, hired a professional camera crew to follow her around recording her every move. (Despite this, her promotional images shown in the news are smartphone selfies taken in bathroom mirrors.)

It isn't clear whether she intends to pitch this raw footage to the networks as a example or a pilot, or if she's actually hiring people to film, edit and produce the TV series now on her own and hope a network bites on it later. It also isn't clear if she's hired an agent, or is doing this completely off the grid by show business standards.

More disturbingly, perhaps, than her self-alteration, is her declaration: "my whole dream is to get this show on MTV." Hmmm. Aim a little higher, perhaps?

And if all that's not enough cognitive dissonance for you, she said another reason for the third breast was because she "doesn't want to date anymore" and that she hoped it would make herself unattractive to men. Say what? I would think a triple-breasted masseuse would be every sci-fi geek's wet dream. Then again, she has publicly stated there is no nipple on the fake third breast, just a tattoo of a picture of one. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Okay. Yeah, you know, that does, in fact, sound very very very very unattractive.

Lastly, to add further annoyance to a story that is already annoying on multiple levels, practically everyone covering this in the media is making reference to the triple-breasted woman in the film Total Recall, and omitting mention of the prior character Eccentrica Gallumbits, a triple-breasted prostitute in the 1979 science fiction novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Come on people, give Douglas Adams his props!

My Lizard Friends

The first thing you notice when you get to Florida is that lizards run this state. No, I'm not talking about the politicians.

They're everywhere. I mean everywhere. After a while you become accustomed to this constant nonstop movement in the periphery of your vision - because everything has lizards crawling all over it. Skittering. Fighting. Jumping. Pulsing big fanlike protuberances from their throats ("dewlaps", they're called.) Doing weird push-up exercises. Gobbling the crumbs you drop and eventually following you around like squirrels, hoping you'll drop more.

Just try and keep geckos out of your house, go on, try, I dare ya. They're so ubiquitous they're known in many circles as simply "house lizards". And the green anoles, oh, the green anoles. And the racerunners and glass lizards and scrub lizards. But it's the brown anoles that, in my experience, are most common down here. I am constantly taking photographs and seeing no lizard in the scene until I get the picture up on my laptop and realize, "oh, look, there's three brown anoles hiding in plain sight."

I hope you like lizards if you come to visit, because you don't have a choice. I'd start learning to speak lizard if I were you.

The Dali Museum

I became obsessed with Salvador Dali at a very early age, and a lot of you out there are probably in the same boat as me. So if you ever have occasion to trek down to St. Peterburg where the largest and greatest repository of the man's work is perpetually on display, let me warn you, it will put the zap on your head.

To finally see all these paintings in person, after imprinting yourself for decades to think of them almost as free-floating memes the size of pages of coffee-table art books, well, it changes you. I damn near had a nervous breakdown the first time I went, and felt like collapsing with exhaustion at the end of the half-century journey to get from there to here.

Many of the paintings that you thought of as displaying astonishingly lifelike photorealism turn out to be surprisingly painterly, and part of the photorealistic effect comes from the distance at which we see them in books. (Did Andy Warhol say "all paintings look better in art books" or did I dream it? Oh well, he should have.) And many of the paintings that you thought were perhaps somewhat secondary or tertiary works actually end up being among the most amazing - because what the books didnt tell you (or maybe they did and we never bothered to think about the dimensions) is that they're postcard sized, and all those painstaking details you see in the books are so intricate they're difficult to see in person without a magnifying glass. S'truth.

The museum is home to 7 of the 18 masterwork paintings by Dalí (including The Hallucinogenic Toreador and The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus), the most of any museum in the world. To be considered a masterwork these paintings must be at least 5 feet in any direction and have been worked on for over a year. I'm told their building (which is basically a giant concrete block with some glass dome elements in the back) is one of the most hurricane-proof structures in the state. Let's pray they're right.

Alas, photography of any kind is verboten at the Dali, so I can't regale you with images of my trips there. A shame too, because during the "Warhol at the Dali" co-exhibition, they had the employees wearing Warhol wigs. Some carried it off more successfully than others.

Red Tide

Red Tide is the name applied to a condition in which portions of the ocean become overrun with an algal bloom of phytoplankton. Despite the nickname, not all Red Tide is red. Sometimes an algal bloom can be present in sufficient quantities to make the water and nearby air dangerous even without coloring the water at all. Some Red Tides - increasingly, most of them, in fact - produce natural toxins and depletion of oxygen in the seawater. Scientists say they don't know everything about how and why Red Tide forms when and where it does, but I like the quote from here likening the delicate balance of algae in the ocean to that of the intestinal flora in our own stomachs.

There is no known case of Red Tide dating before 1793, when one occurred in Canada. When you look at the list of significant incidents since then, they're all weighted to modern times: there was a major outbreak in 1840, then 1972, then 2005, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. Are you startin' to see a pattern here, well, huh, are ya?

The Red Tide is back with a vengeance this summer, and though it hasn't yet been definitively linked to the recent fish die-off on Honeymoon Island and Caladesi Island, it's a safe bet for the smart money.

Of even greater concern to me, though, is how the Red Tide may be a canary-in-coalmine indicator of increased hydrogen sulfide and methane in the area.

Giant Crustacean in Fort Pierce

Fisherman Steve Bargeron got more than he bargained for when he reeled in this enormous unidentified crustacean recently. He was fishing off a dock in Fort Pierce when he snagged the scary specimen.

Marine biologists are still examining the critter, and haven't yet determined just what it is. The media are almost universally referring to it as a "giant shrimp", but that's not known for sure. It is possible, some have said, that it could be a variant of the Mantis Shrimp - which, despite the name, bears no relation to mantises or shrimps; it's actually a type of crustacean known as a stomatopod.

New Smyrna Jellyfish Invasion

A few days ago, beachgoers at New Smyrna Beach in Volusia County were horrified to find a jellyfish outbreak which resulted in 406 reported stings in just 48 hours. Purple flags were placed out there to warn people, but people do tend to ignore such warnings - I've been people surfing during tropical storm warnings, and swimming during Red Tide alerts.

I've seen mainstream media news sources state that it is "unknown" what kind of jellyfish were washing up, but I think that's just journalist-speak for "I'm too lazy to found out." I have it on good authority that the most common of the types of jellyfish washing ashore was Stomolophus meleagris, a.k.a. the Cannonball Jellyfish.

Fake Cell Towers

According to a number of reports swirling around this week, fake cellphone towers have been discovered hiding in plain sight across the United States. Details are still sketchy - some describe them as actual physical lookalike towers, while others suggest that they may actually be just a disguised device secretly operating from somewhere nearby - maybe a rooftop. Given that Florida loves disguising conventional cell tower tech as palm trees, they could be anywhere.

Whatever they look like, their signals have definitely been detected, and they are actually bypassing your phone's reception and encryption and monitoring your communications. Les Goldsmith, who's CEO of the super-creepy ESD America, is the one being credited with revealing their existence. I find that strange, though, since his company is exactly the sort that likes to equip spies with snooping technology in the first place. Since we now know - thanks to Edward Snowden - that the National Security Agency has been spying on practically every move you make on a computer or phone, the NSA is an unlikely explanation for these towers. They don't need such primitive and elaborate ruses. So who, then?

I think we can rule out foreign spies and corporate private intel agents, as many have theorized. The problem with the whole concept of phony cell towers is that in order to mimic a "real" phone company tower, they must transmit data as well as receive, in order to "talk" to your phone (and, some say, even implant cutting-edge malware).

That being so, it is an impossibility for the existence of these towers to go unknown to the phone companies or the FCC. It cannot happen. The resulting signal would cause great and noticeable disturbance in local reception, which would in turn be immediately noticed and the source could and would be tracked down. Since this has obviously not happened and the towers continue doing what they're doing even now that it's completely public knowledge, the only remaining answer is that these towers are operating with the blessing and cooperation of Federal entities and cell network providers.

If you see your phone inexplicably drop down from 4G to 2G, be aware your phone may be experiencing a spoof attack from one of these towers. I suggest trying to have a sense of humor about it, and sending a text to yourself that reads, "hey guys, you're not fooling anybody".

So.... specifically who is doing it?

I think it's a safe bet that there are more than one set of snoopers at work/play here, including the various entities that have spun off from Blackwater and still have considerable insider "pull" at the Pentagon. But I'm guessing that more often than not, these towers are utilized by none other than your local police force. In case you missed the memo and didn't watch the news during the Ferguson debacle, cops are nothing like Andy Griffith nowadays; they're increasingly militarized and are rapidly acquiring better technology at their disposal than some units of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.

Now that the story has actually reached the mainstream media and has firmly risen above the purview of woo, I'm trying to track down an actual detailed list of where these alleged towers are. I find it troubling that this basic information doesn't seem to be available. The best I've come up with so far is the map shown above. It seems to show one of the spy spots as being around Ft. Myers, and another looks to be right here on The Peninsula.

I'm on the case.

Bigfoot's Arm

Cryptozoologists are abuzz about the find of a large non-human arm in the wilderness of Liberty County, near Tallahassee. It's being sent to a lab for study, in hopes that it might prove once and for all the existence of Bigfoot. (Or, as we call him around here, the "Skunk Ape".)

I have to say there is every possibility this will turn out to be a large monkey's arm. Though the Skunk Ape hunters who found the specimen say "there are no bears or monkeys in this area", there's simply no way to state that with certainty. As readers of this blog are aware, monkeys have been escaping and reproducing like mad all over the state for decades now, and they don't always follow predictable patterns of territory - as we've seen with Cornelius the macaque in St. Petersburg.

But I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

Developing...