By Aaron Littleton
Production Coordinator / TriCities.com
Published: August 15, 2008

“Is this a hoax?” jeered some unknown spectator at the Bigfoot press conference in Palo Alto, California today.
Tom Biscardi seemed buffeted, but stayed strong.  “This is as real as you’re standing right where you are, sir.”
Many in the audience were clearly unconvinced at the press conference, a bizarre spectacle thin on answers and thick with questions.  Even if by some miracle Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton’s Bigfoot find turns out to be the real deal, most will still believe it a hoax, considering how badly the whole thing has been managed.  The two Georgia men, dressed more like they were on their way to the local watering hole, and less like they were participating in an international press conference, seemed notably uncomfortable and stiff in front of the audience, as they attempted to explain away blunder after blunder with the discovery and preservation of the body.  For the most part, they claimed ignorance.
That, at least, was not hard to believe.
Two new photos of the creature were shown: a close-up of the mouth with the tongue hanging out, supposedly proving that the head was not a mask, and your standard long distance photo of the creature loping away.  Biscardi held these 8.5 x 11 prints up for the crowd to see, but promised copies to those who attended.
Sadly, I was not able to convince Media General to bankroll a plane ticket to California to attend a Bigfoot press conference, so you’ll have to get those elsewhere.
Perhaps more information will be forthcoming in the following days.  One thing the the trio did manage to do was leave my hunger for more information largely unsatiated.  I, like most, want to see this handled by the scientific community at large.  Get me a biologist notable in their field.  Get me a zoologist, a horse trainer, a dog groomer - anybody that might have the slightest idea about animals.  Get me somebody that knows to contact a university or a Federal Wildlife Marshall or at least someone that knows that putting a valuable scientific specimen into a freezer full of water isn’t the best way to preserve it.  Most of all, get me a decent photographer.  Get me somebody besides Tom Biscardi, Rick Dyer and Matthew Whitton.
Please.
I continue to be unconvinced,but I’ll follow this in case more developments of a slightly more believable nature come in.