Victorian Yeti sells for $1000

The BBC reports a Victorian museum collection selling over five hundred items including more than 200 taxidermy pieces that have sold for more than £280,000 at auction.

The collection included stuffed dead animals and others made to look like mythical creatures.

A giant stuffed tortoise fetched the most at £6,000, a "unicorn" sold for £2,800 while a "yeti" went for £650. Other items in the sale included a mermaid, a hare with antlers (jackalope?) and a cat with wings.

In Victorian times, taxidermy - the process of stuffing dead animals and placing them in lifelike poses - was very fashionable.

Matthew Denney from the auction house said: "There are still some collectors out there who want to buy this sort of thing, and it's a way of appreciating the natural world and the lions and zebras are very beautiful, beautiful creatures.
"You don't normally get the chance to see these items up close. The level of interest has been huge."

EXTERNAL LINKS
The BBC Article
Victorian Taxidermy

Mid-America Bigfoot Org Gets Good Press

While others are focused on the exposed prank by a Tulsa paper, we would like to salute D.W. Lee, Mid-America Bigfoot Research Center's(MABRC)executive director. MABRC is where researcher's think outside of the box.

Its rare when a bigfooter can get any message across without it being spun tongue-in-cheek with wink-wink and a nudge-nudge.

Towards the end of the article D.W. gets some choice quotes.

Another authoritative voice confirmed Blackfox's conclusion.

"We heard about the Kenwood rumors and sent one of our investigators, who confirmed it was a hoax," said D.W. Lee, the Mid-America Bigfoot Research Center's executive director.

Lee said his investigator identified the cell-phone photograph as one from the Patterson-Gimlin footage taken in California. The audio recording is a recorded howl out of Ohio. Both the photograph and audio clip are downloaded from the Internet.

Lee said the organization gets about 10 telephone calls a month. They are evenly divided among legitimate, misidentifications and hoaxes, he said.

The organization is currently working 25 active investigations of Bigfoot sightings in Oklahoma, he said.

"When we do expose a hoax, it shows the credibility of our organization," Lee said.

Lee is quick not to discount the Bigfoot sightings in northeastern Oklahoma.

"About four weeks ago, there was a Bigfoot sighting witnessed by 12 people," Lee said.

Lee would only say the hairy creature was spotted in southern Adair County by one of his research groups on an overnight trip. He estimated the creature to be between 7 and 8 feet tall.

"He stepped out of water and stood behind a tree," Lee said. "We turned off the spotlight, and he disappeared through the river reeds."

We salute Mid-America Bigfoot Research Center and all the work they do.

Full disclosure: Our artist Guy Edwards designed the graphical header for the MABRC Forums.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Tulsa Article
Mid-America Bigfoot Research Center Site

Oriental Yeti is No Primate, but Crypto-like

Its already got a nickname, "oriental yeti". Not that we think this creature is anyway related to the Bigfoot, Sasquatch or Yeti, but we thought this would appeal to your crypto-sensibilities. Even though the name is a bit of a misnomer, everybody here at the club thought this particular case was fascinating. This creature will be going through DNA testing to help identify it.

On another note you will notice the original article at the Times Online is dated for tomorrow, proving that our physicist at BLC Labs were serious about building that time machine.

Here is an exerpt from the Times Online UK

A bizarre creature, dubbed the “oriental yeti”, has baffled scientists after emerging from ancient woodlands in remote central China.

The hairless beast was trapped by hunters in Sichuan province after locals reported spotting what they thought was a bear.

One hunter, Lu Chin, said: “It looks a bit like a bear but it doesn’t have any fur and it has a tail like a kangaroo.

“It also does not sound like a bear — it has a voice like a cat and it is calling all the time — perhaps it is looking for the rest of its kind or maybe it's the last one.

"There are local legends of a bear that used to be a man and some people think that’s what we caught," he added.

Now stumped local animal experts have shipped the mystery beast to scientists in Beijing for DNA tests.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Read the Original Artical