I thought the “Bigfoot/Sasquatch” thing had finally run its course and had been put away, given that so many people have admitted to perpetuating the hoax for fun and profit. But no, the legend lives on. Big Hairy may be moving to Detroit!

But now the Bigfoot story moves away from the Pacific Northwest to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. An expedition of “researchers” will key on Marquette County.

Now get this. The guy who is leading this “research” is named Matthew Moneymaker. Isn’t that poetic?

I guess I’ve never thought of the possibility of a Bigfoot being so close to Detroit, but Michigan still has a lot of wooded areas. I wouldn’t expect them to be searching in Kansas or Nebraska. You can’t hide something that big in a wheat field or a corn patch, though I did watch a movie the other night where a scarecrow came to life and terrorized a community.

And I’m wondering if this would be the same Bigfoot of the Northwest that has now relocated, or is this a cousin?

In an Associated Press story, Moneymaker said members of his group have had glimpses of this creature or have been close enough to hear it in all but three of 30 expeditions in the United States and Canada.

Meanwhile, our government has equipment that employs infrared, satellites and other high tech stuff that can actually tell how many people are in a tent in the middle of a desert from a 10,000 miles away. I would think that in their observations of human-like activities across the globe, they would have noticed if there had been one creature that was incredibly larger than all the rest (pro basketball players and Dick Cheney’s ego excluded).

Moneymaker said his group would talk to locals and collect their experiences in this venue of folklore. Actually, he didn’t use the word “folklore,” I threw that in to accentuate my cynicism.

Now when Moneymaker says members of his group have had “glimpses” of this creature, I wonder if he winked. It’s easy to glimpse something out of the corner of your eye and then your imagination turns it into some kind of conspiracy or something eerie. I think that’s how we got into a war in Iraq. Someone glimpsed a Roman candle and fertilized such a sighting until it grew into a weapon of mass destruction. Ironically, that little crazy nut job with the scrub-brush hairdo in North Korea said, “Hey I’ve got weapons of mass destruction. Do you want to see them?”

And of course we can hear things that sound spooky and imagine all sorts of stuff.

My cousin heard a sound outside his house one night. He imagined a burglar trying to heist his outboard motor. So he got his baseball bat, went charging around the corner in the dark and got knocked silly. When he sat up and looked around, he had run into the behind of someone’s mule that had gotten loose and was feeding in his garden.

And I’m sure if we all listen carefully, we can hear a loud swish that, by engaging a great imagination, might sound like a pterodactyl leaving its nest when it’s only our tax money regularly being sucked out of our national treasury headed to Iraq. Okay, enough about politics, assuming Bigfoot hasn’t declared a party.

I’ve always poohpoohed the idea of a Bigfoot. We’ve found no carcasses, no poop, none have applied for federal aid, and there is no case on record where a novice deer hunter has shot one by mistake.

I think these expeditions are actually covers. They give non-golfers a chance to get out of the house for a weekend, sit around a campfire, drink beer and tell ghost stories. Maybe they sing “Kumbaya.” Not a one of them truly believes he’s going to meet “Big Hairy.” I think some people just have a tendency to romance things larger than themselves. If there is not a mystery, they will invent one. Oops! I’m about to get into politics again.

(Dwain Walden is editor/publisher of The Moultrie Observer, 985-4545. E-mail: dwain.walden@gaflnews.com)