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By Myles Aweigh
[Editor's note: Our friend Myles has been "away" for awhile and we honestly lost track of him. But that's pretty normal – and always kind of a relief. It turns out that this time he was on the trail of Big Foot. "I never believed in Big Foot or Sasquatch or any of that hokum," he told us on his return. "But when my friend Ferdinand came to me with his gorilla story, I had to take the case and sleuth it out." And so Myles is back with his report on his hunt for Big Foot.]
Veteran area actor Ferdinand McFrederick thought the costume he wore as the lead in last year's production of "King Kong: The Musical" at Dayton's Liberty Theater smelled kind of funny when he first got it. And then things got worse. "I got pretty sweaty when I was hanging off the fake Empire State Building set, singing ‘Dream a Little Dream of Me'" says Ferdinand. "During the first rehearsal I stunk so bad that the little gal who played the Fay Wray part passed out right underneath the radio tower before I got halfway through the song. I had to grab her to keep her from breaking her neck."
McFrederick says it was a miracle that all of the performances of the play were completed. "We spent over a hundred bucks on Fabreeze," he says, "and we kept the doors to the theater open all through November." And still, he said, the whole cast was sick to their stomachs by the end of each night.
When your trusty Blue Mountain News reporter asked McFrederick where he got the gamy getup, he said he purchased it from a web site run by two guys in Georgia called www.realisticanimalcostumes.com. So I undertook an exclusive secret investigation to determine the source of the stinky suit. First I checked the web site and found that the boys in Georgia offer "exclusive ultra-realistic costumes sewn by premier costume tailors from around the globe!" Offerings on the site included mostly deer and elk costumes, along with the occasional fox suit for children. More investigation was needed – so I gassed up the Maverick and headed east.
When I got to Georgia and pinned the boys down, they admitted they were simply offering skinned deer and elk they hunted in the mountains around their home and claimed they were expensive hand-sewn wildlife costumes from the Near-East. "Grait ah-dee-ah, innut?" asked the first boy, who called himself "Fishbuck".
"It's a disgusting idea!" I screamed at the boys. "How many gullible fools have bought your pathetic pelts?" I asked. At this point the boys admitted that they hadn't actually sold a deer or elk costume.
But the story took a strange turn when the boys told me about the only sale they'd made. They shot what they thought was a gorilla in the woods north of Macon. "We nowed we hee-uht pie duht," said boy number two, who called himself "Jacksaw". Sure enough, some chump in Washington State bought it. They asked me if I knew what gorilla costumes are worth? When I shook my head the boys started jumping up and down. "Wie guht too hunnert frit!" exclaimed Fishbuck. "Yaynkee dahlluhs," he added. They said it paid for their new still and asked if I wanted to see it. They were still putting it together. I declined and headed for the car – another successful case under my belt.
When I got back to Dayton, I proudly reported what I'd learned to Ferdinand. He immediately yelled, "but Myles, you idiot, there's no gorillas in Georgia!"
We looked at each other for a few seconds and then both suddenly yelled the same thing at once. "Big Foot!!!"
When I called the Georgia boys and told them they might have discovered Big Foot, they just laughed and laughed. "Yeah, shuh, whuht ahvuh," exclaimed Jacksaw. After a moment Fishbuck asked me if I wanted to know what the new product they were selling was.
I bit. "OK," I said. "What is it?"
"Itsah Raichahd Naixuhn Mahsk." I started to feel sick and then both boys howled with laughter. I slammed the phone down. They obviously got the still to work.
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