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The Farmer File: Michigan counters our Skunk Ape with its own
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It’s time for our beloved Skunk Ape to resurface here.
We need that pesky hominid cryptid to show up in the Everglades again to counter the latest rush of tourism to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Folks are flocking there — at least a few families in RVs, a couple of cryptozoologists with clipboards and scores of public relations flacks — to check out reports that big bad Bigfoot is back in the UP.
Yoopers, those 300,000 or so hearty souls who live in that beautiful, challenging stretch of Northern Michigan, are excited, especially resort owners.
In a normal, non-Sasquatch year, 99.3 percent of Michigan’s 10 million residents come to Southwest Florida in winter.
The only people left in Michigan in season are the NFL Detroit Lions and the NBA Detroit Pistons, a snow mobile dealer and a snowman with a carrot nose in the prime of his life. He just sits there in frozen comfort, knowing summer brings big mosquitoes and worse.
Michigan tourism officials, hoping to lure Floridians there in summer, are paying tall guys in hairy suits to run around the north woods beating their chests and scratching themselves.
Are we to stand idly by and let America’s vacation trails tilt up to the UP?
Our tourism numbers haven’t been all that great lately. We need a new attraction, now that the Naples Dinner Theater is closed.
Moreover, Marco Island’s new sewer system isn’t far enough along yet to attract hordes of sightseers.
So, we need our Skunk Ape to get out there and make a stir. I’m sure Fox 4 News would cover it.
We could change his name if “Skunk Ape” is just too silly to be taken seriously, even by the wing-nuts who traipse through piney woods and swampy glades, seeking Yetis, Devil Monkeys, Nuk-Luks, Nyalmos, Big Boogers and other behemoths.
They’ll be lucky even to spot Smoky Bear out there, putting out a campfire. Maybe they’ll get a glimpse of Crime Dog, taking a bite out of a fleeing fugitive.
Aside from the “Michigan Sasquatch Studies Group” (really) I wanted an eyewitness report from the scene so I called a Marco friend and part-time Yooper, Mary Zachrich. She and her husband Chuck Schwindt are up there for the summer.
She got the scoop, whispering into her cell phone from a restaurant in the UP:
“I’m watching the salad bar. A guy resembling the Geico cave man is pawing the prosciutto. He’s either part ape or has the nastiest brown gabardine suit in the UP.”
Just then the phone went dead. Later Mary called back to explain.
“I panicked and hung up when that hirsute he-man turned, looked at me, winked and said, ‘So How’re YOU doing, eh?’ in a bad imitation of a bad Yooper accent.
“I stuttered, ‘You’re not from around here are you?’ then ran out of the restaurant, totally missing the evening menu special, ‘All the Lutefisk You Can Eat’ for $9.95’”
Lutefisk, for those of us not descended from Vikings, is dried cod soaked in a lye solution before boiling to give it a gelatinous consistency. Yum.
We’re recalling Mary back to Marco at once to lead the search for our beloved Skunk Ape. Her first reporting effort will be to see whether he’s planning to run for City Council.
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Don Farmer is a former news anchor for CNN and a former foreign and political correspondent for ABC News. E-mail: don@donfarmer.com.
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Of course the Skunk Ape left, you see there is no affordable housing and the FCAT scores are terrible, and our lawns are brown, so he left.
#1 Posted by kneejerk on July 6, 2007 at 8:08 a.m. (Suggest removal)
So the Skunk Ape's a snowbird too???
#2 Posted by sheltie on July 6, 2007 at 2:05 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Collier County Tourism Director, Jack Wert has repeatedly dismissed claims that the Skunk Ape has any value what so ever. In fact, he recently ignored requests to assist in a Travel Channel special on Bigfoot. Collier County Commissioners are afraid of thier own shadows, as a result of past commissioners being arrested for misappropriation of funds concerning a golf tournament. Jack Wert feels the county would be better served by promoting jet ski rentals and off shore boat racing as well as free camping in the Ten Thousand Islands. Television ads promoting these activities are running across the country this summer at a tremendous expense to the county. It is no secret that Jack Wert and the county commissioners have black balled the Skunk Ape therefore I seriously doubt thier will be any sightings this summer in Collier County, however, the Orlando/Central Florida area has had a notable increase in sightings in 2006. I strongly recommend removal of Jack Wert from office. His philosophy of tourism is detrimental to the environment as well as destructive to the economy of Southwest Florida. Just for the record Skunk Ape will not be running for City Council.
#3 Posted by skunkape on July 6, 2007 at 7:41 p.m. (Suggest removal)
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