Footprints in the Sand

Sidey’s Weekend Theme is “feet”.

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Once there were thousands of them. They roamed freely about the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, proud, magnficent and extremely hairy. They were smarter than monkeys, stronger than apes and mistier than gorillas. They would surely have become the Primate of the primates were it not for one small flaw.

They were not known as Bigfeet.

The Bigfoots had one extremely large foot the size of a rowing boat and one very small one about eight inches long. In other words one foot wasn’t even a foot.

The reasons for this are shrouded in mystery. It is believed that the bigger foot was for stamping out fires, skating on the frozen lakes during winter and kicking annoying raccoons into the next field. The smaller one was, like Ryan Giggs’s right foot, simply for standing on.

As I say, once there were thousands of them. Then along came man who, as is man’s stupid way, proceeded to hunt them down. They used their hides as blankets, their toe nails as shields and their bigger foot to build garden sheds.

They would roast and eat the smaller foot and announce that it tasted like chicken. This is not surprising, everyone throughout history forced by circumstances to eat badger, panda, dormouse, python or the limbs of plane-crash passengers less fortunate than themselves has described the taste as being “just like chicken”.

The one exception to this rule is the McDonald’s Chicken McNugget.

Now there was just one of his kind left. He hid himself in the woodland of British Columbia, away from prying human eyes. Occasionally he would accidentally leave footprints in the mud (everyone would excitedly photograph the huge footprint, no-one ever noticed the smaller one beside it) and just occasionally he would appear for a second in full view and be captured on film, as in the famous photo shown here.

One day he was sitting disconsolately at the side of a lake when he saw what he thought for a second was his reflection in the water. Then he turned and his mouth fell open in astonishment.

There was another Bigfoot standing behind him.

Not only that, but she was female. He could tell that because her toenails were painted (on one foot using that little brush they use for painting Airfix models, on the other foot using a roller). She was also carrying a handbag, though what it might contain was a complete mystery to him, as indeed is the case with all handbags to all males.

David Attenborough sneaked up through the woods beside them at this point, and in his words:

“Slowly. They circle. Each other. He offers her. A coconut, a mating ritual among. Primates. She. Takes the coconut and. Crushes it under her bigger foot, confirming that she. Is interested. They rub. Noses, then he moves behind her. And, noisily, they”

Anyway, enough from David Attenborough, he can get his own blog. They were a perfect match for each other, since his right foot was the larger one, while hers was the left. They hugged each other, danced around in circles (there was, of course, no other way they could dance) in glee, and became mates for life.

In time they were blessed with offspring and to their delight each child had two feet the same size. Suitably shorn of their hair they were able to enter human society.

The boys inherited the big feet and became circus clowns. The girls got the tiny feet and became ballerinas.

The parents still live in the same wood, where they have fun playing with us humans. They love to sit side by side at the lake where they first met and wiggle their toes in the water, causing fishermen at the other end of the lake to fall out of their boats. By walking side-by-side they can produce huge left-and-right footprints in the sand, giving rise to the myth of the swartzenegger. And if they come upon a lone human with a camera they jump from the woods and wave cheerfully at him.

They know that the advent of Photoshop means that there is no way that his photographs will be taken seriously.