Table of Contents

 

                      Preface

             Introduction

The Role of “Habituation” within the History of Primate Research

           

               Chapter One

  Listening At The Tree Line:
     The Study of Sasquatch
             Comes of Age            

           Chapter Two

“Playing Hide ‘N’ Seek with ‘The 
               Monkey Kids’”:      

Five Families Get to Know the Neighbors

         

              Chapter Three

“When I Find A Special Spot…”: 

A Local Guide Appears, then Disappears

 

            Chapter Four

 Applying the Lessons in my Own
             Childhood Forest:

    The Vermont Ravine Project 
                  2007 & 2008      

         

                  Chapter Five

          Habituation Families 
                One Year Later

         Introduction

   The Role of "Habituation" 
        Within the History of
            Primate Research

 

     Jane Goodall’s life was changed forever in 1960 when, in Nairobi, she experienced

her first close encounter.

  For over half a year I had been trying to overcome the chimpanzees’ inherent fear of me, the fear that made them vanish into the undergrowth whenever I approached.  At first they had fled even when I was as far away as five hundred yards and on the other side of the ravine…[But now,] less than twenty yards away from me two male chimpanzees were sitting on the ground staring at me  intently.  Scarcely breathing, I waited for the sudden panic-stricken flight that normally followed a surprise encounter between myself and the chimpanzees at close quarters.  But nothing of the sort happened.  The two large chimps simply continued to gaze at me.           
        Very slowly I sat down, and after a few more moments, the two calmly began to groom one another.  (In the Shadow of Man)

 

    Three years later, having recently set up a gorilla research station in the mountains of Rwanda, Dian Fossey experienced an initiation, as well.

      I shall never forget my first encounter with the gorillas.  Sound    preceded sight. Odor preceded sound in the form of an overwhelming   musky-barnyard, humanlike scent.  The air was suddenly rent by a high-pitched series of screams followed by the     rhythmic rondo of sharp pok-pok chestbeats from a great silverback      male obscured behind what seemed an impenetrable wall of vegetation…. Most of the females had fled with their infants to the rear of the group, leaving the silverback leader and some younger males in the foreground, standing with compressed lips. (Gorillas in the Mist)

 

 “During the early days of the study at Kabara,” writes Fossey, "it was difficult to establish contacts because the gorillas were not habituated or accustomed to my presence and usually fled on seeing me.  I could often choose between two different kinds of contacts:   obscured, when the gorillas didn’t know I was watching them, or    open contacts, when they were aware of my presence."
 

  She learned that the best way to

habituate these creatures was simply to

act like them.

 

 Open contacts…slowly helped me win the animals’ acceptance.  This was especially true when I learned that imitation of some of their ordinary activities such as scratching and feeding or copying their contentment vocalizations tended to put the animals at ease more rapidly than if I simply looked at them through binoculars   while taking notes.  I always wrapped vines around the binoculars in an attempt to disguise the potentially threatening glass eyes from the shy animals. 

 

    Jane Goodall, too, took a humble and consistent approach in order to familiarize her subject with her daily presence.  

       Because I always looked the same, wearing similar dull-colored   clothes, and never tried to follow them or harass them in any way, the shy chimpanzees began to realize at long last, that after all I was not so horrific and terrifying.

 

 Famously, of course, through years of devoted patience, both Goodall and Fossey gained acceptance by their respective primate study groups, and it was this high threshold of immediacy and intimacy that allowed their research projects to break new ground.

 Since the mid-1980s, researchers have found increasing success in making contact with Sasquatch, too, progressively refining their methods.  For the most part, these methods have featured acoustical overtures—“wood knocks,” “whoop calls,” etc.—designed to elicit responses; when a colloquy does take place, it usually occurs late at night, quite often well past midnight.  Like Goodall and Fossey, Sasquatch researchers, principally those of the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization, have come to rely on such imitative behavior in order to play upon the animals’ natural curiosity, and in the darkness, imitation means sound.  Species interaction in this mode has now reached the point at which it can be achieved on a regular basis in many locations throughout North America. Regular, yes, and even predictable, yet by no means frequent.  Perhaps five percent of the time, an overture will receive a recognizable response.  But even this seemingly low figure far outweighs what was possible before.

Rarer still, during expeditions, sightings have taken place, an individual Sasquatch lured into view—again, mostly at night, and mostly very fleetingly, such as a head peeking from behind a tree—by these humans’ oddly non-human behavior.  Expedition-goers have caught glimpses through night vision infrared binoculars or scopes, but only quite recently has the gold standard of night-vision technology—hand-held thermal imagers able to record video—come within financial reach of some researchers or, more accurately, of generous sponsors of researchers; and still, a good one costs nine thousand dollars.  Thermal imagers are such a gold standard, in this specialized area of primate research, because 1) they are an entirely passive instrument, emitting nothing, able to read the “heat signatures” given off by objects, especially living organic objects, whereas most other night-vision devices are active, giving off an infrared beam that can, it seems, be seen and avoided by this animal, and 2) thermal imagers can “see” even in the thickest dark, when the Sasquatch feels most comfortable and will often draw nearer.  

  As “shy” as Goodall and Fossey found their chimpanzees and mountain gorillas to be, Sasquatch is a hundred-fold more evasive, and smarter; otherwise, such a creature never would have been able to survive alongside human beings for several hundred millennia, and to avoid our increasingly weaponized domination.

 Jane Goodall tells, for instance, of the chimp she called David Greybeard becoming brazen enough in time to simply stride into her camp and take bananas from her hand, his example soon persuading other members of his troupe to follow suit.

  Dian Fossey, also, was eventually able to touch, even to groom and be groomed by, her subjects. 

  In the case of Sasquatch, however, this level of physical contact and interaction does not fall within the researchers’ range of rewards. 

  At the same time, the Holy Grail of Sasquatch research does remain consistent habituation, this concept taken, though, in a more attenuated sense than in the case of other primates. The situations described in detail in this book represent the furthest advances toward genuine contact and interaction yet achieved.  Or, to be more precise, these are our furthest documented advances, for it must be assumed that many times, over the vast stretch of human/Sasquatch co-evolution, interaction has occurred, some of it no doubt rising to the level of familiar regularity.  But this must always have represented the rare exception, when they allowed themselves at times, and in the right circumstances, to indulge in a highly textured—albeit still exceedingly cautious—degree of contact.  While we may place the following examples in the category of “play,” the implied intellect behind these gambits is much more nuanced than even the clever chimp or wise gorilla will display. 

 One of my neighbors in Vermont is a woodsman.  Otkeeo has been interacting with Sasquatch for years, though he has never laid eyes on one. That may sound like a naively credulous statement, until you realize that he has heard wood knocks and distinct—yet unintelligible—voices  in the middle of nowhere, and found many of the simple stick and tree structures that have been reported throughout North America in close proximity to well-documented Sasquatch sightings.  These pieces of evidence by themselves would not, I think, be compelling enough in Otkeeo’s case, were it not for the added layer of game-playing.

      I put two quarters on the ground and put them about a foot apart.  Right out in plain sight. My idea is that no one could resist a couple quarters. If they disappeared then I know I have people in my woods and should keep an eye and ear open for them. (I fear people in the woods.)  I also had them facing up and pointed them to face   north.  Nothing happened the first few years...till last year. Then a quarter was gone.  I examined the area and found in the spot of the quarter, a cute little arrangement of feathers.  Each a different color.  And spread out facing east.  If it were a person they would have taken both quarters and would not have left such a beautiful little      arrangement.

 That is just like the games I played with the thing in the [Town Name] Woods.  I would put sticks or stones next to the trail in various positions and they would be rearranged when I returned a few hours later.  I am a very observant person, especially out in the   woods. At one time it put a broken arrow into the ground so I took the two pieces and placed them on a stump next to where they had been. I faced them north. When I returned only one piece was there and the other piece was stuck in the ground again.

    Hundreds of reports, continent-wide, of such quiet, sly pranksterism, share an undercurrent of strangeness, humor, and a kind of tacit empathy.

  A fellow researcher in Upstate New York wrote me of an ongoing situation he experienced at his remote trailer, which culminated in the following series of events.  Having very recently undergone a painful break-up from his girlfriend, one afternoon Kevin started crying.  He had brought a load of firewood back home.   

      I left the rear hatch of the Jeep open, because I intended on         going back out to finish unloading.  I lay down on the couch with the cat and just kept crying.  I am not sure how much time passed, but Wayne  knocked on my door, screaming my name.  He is a friend from [Town Name], who had heard on the scanner that a sheriff had driven up my road, found my Jeep, and seen what he thought was a bear in the backyard.  Now, that same sheriff, two state   troopers, and the fire marshall came flying up in the snow.        
      I went outside, with Wayne, and the sheriff said that he saw a bear trying to get in my Jeep when he came around the bend down by my  property.  He said it went into the creek, then when he stopped      behind my Jeep, he could hear it breaking branches up that steep    mountain to my west. 

   Finally, everybody left except me and Wayne. When we went to unload the rest of the wood, the truck was empty but for three logs, and the wood was piled up near the burn barrel, out back.                    
      Earlier, I had only just begun the process, myself, so the truck had   been full.  Odd as it sounds, I began to suspect that something was trying to help me, though I definitely didn’t want its help.  There are many old apple trees on my property.   I thought that if I left an offering at the northeast corner, where my land meets state land,   whatever it was would leave me alone.  So I left a big Tupperware container, with no cover, filled with apples, and nutty power bars, on a platform, about five feet up a spruce tree. Next morning, gone. OK, maybe deer, or some animal.  Next day, same thing, four or five apples, nutty bars, chocolate sugar cookies—gone.  

  At the time, part of me is saying,  "What is wrong with you?"  The other part is starting to feel relieved, like everything is going to be OK.  Still, I'm afraid to tell anyone, and it could still be animals.

Third day, I had dinner with my friend, then stayed at his house.  I didn't get a chance to walk up the mountain to load the bait container.  The next morning, 5:00am, I left his house, and drove up to my trailer. The container is sitting on my back stairs, with this frozen, dried-up little bush:  lemon mint.  Pulled up by the roots.  

 I unlock the door, go in, and the window by the couch where I’d started sleeping is open, and another three or four dried-up mint branches are lying on the back of the couch.  I really lost it at this point.  The cat is nowhere to be found. I start to call the sheriff, but  what the hell am I going to say?

 The next day, after I’d left another “gift” in the bait container at the corner of my land, more mint leaves, and the whole plants, appeared in the seats of my Jeep, all pushed through the space I’d left the windows open.

 
      The nature of the habituation experiences that people undergo depends heavily upon context; the quality of the interaction seems conditioned most by the posture assumed and the attitude projected by the homo sapiens involved.  This is a lesson well learned, in their own research, by Goodall and Fossey, who had to teach themselves an ever-increasing level of patience and good will, which the primates eventually returned in kind.   When they erred, they often paid the price, as in this incident recounted in Gorillas in the Mist.

 On a slope gorillas always feel more secure when positioned above humans.  I never relished climbing up to a group from directly below, but the thickness of the vegetation compelled me to do so.  Once…just about twenty feet below the gorillas, who could be heard feeding above, I softly vocalized to make my presence known.  A number of curious infants and juveniles climbed into trees above to stare intently down at the unaccustomed equipment [my bulky tape recorder]…. Just as expected, the [adult male] silverbacks instantly led the females, all hysterically screaming, in a bluff-charge to within ten feet.  Because of the intensity of the screams…I tried to bend down to adjust the machine’s volume, but the slightest movement incited renewed charges from the overwrought animals.  Forgetting all about the microphone, I whispered to myself, “I’ll never get out of this alive!”  Only when the group eventually climbed out of sight was it possible to turn off the recorder.

 

           The so-called “Siege at Honobia,” in 2000, presents a darker side to both human and Sasquatch behavior.  It all started when residents of a rural Oklahoma property began leaving fresh deer meat in a freezer in their backyard.  On January 17 of that year, the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization Web site received the following urgent message:

           Too many incidents to mention here, please have someone contact us. This is no hoax and my brother is afraid for his family. This   creature is getting bolder every time it returns. This thing is huge, walks upright, smells like musky urine, burned hair type odor. He repeatedly comes back in the early morning hours after midnight and harasses them until just before dawn.  It has on more than one  occasion tried to enter their home. We don't know where to turn.  Everyone thinks we are crazy when we mention it. Please,  we don't know what to do but I do know that something needs to be done!  There are stories we could tell that would make the hair stand on your neck.

 

      “The message went on to explain,” writes Matthew Moneymaker, Founder and Director of the BFRO, “that the family was having problems over the past two years with one or more nuisance animals that were prowling around outside the home at night. The animals were stealing deer meat from an outside shed.   The situation had escalated when the animals tried to get into the home. At one point the father went outside to confront the animal. He got a good look at one, and took a shot at what he claimed was a Sasquatch running back into the woods.
        “We contacted the family after receiving the report,” Moneymaker continues. “The man we spoke with first was the brother of the father of the family. He insisted that they were not kidding around. At least one Sasquatch was coming around the homestead almost every night.  It was coming onto the porch, messing with a window, wiggling the door knob as if it wanted to get in, and even stealing deer meat out of a freezer that was kept in an open-sided outbuilding. Whatever it was wasn't alone. The family could hear chattering and screaming from the hills when the prowler(s) were near the home.
       “The wife was too fearful to remain in the house. She and the kids were relocated temporarily while the men armed themselves with assault rifles and prepared to defend the homestead against the nightly prowlers.” 
       Moneymaker dispatched a regional BFRO Investigator to the scene, and then monitored events by phone.  Here is his account: 

      Tim [who shot at the intruder] wants us to take care of his problem. 
      He doesn't want the Sasquatch coming back to his house anymore and he doesn't care what it takes to make it stop. He will not move and not hold back from shooting at it if it returns.

      [The BFRO Investigator and two other men] are at the location setting up. I spoke with Tim's wife briefly. She reiterated how frightened they were of this thing and described some of the incidents. Far from jumping to conclusions, she said she and her husband had denied the whole thing to   themselves for a few years.  It wasn't until after the deer meat (three complete quartered deer) had all disappeared from the large, chest-high freezer in the outdoor shed that the intruder started trying to get in the house at night. It didn't just scratch at the window, she said. It had pulled off parts of the window and was getting bolder in its attempts to get in the   house. The recent deer kill found outside had not been shot. One of its legs was violently twisted and broken. It had clearly been carried, not dragged, to the spot where it was found.  The most interesting thing was how the predator pulled out the internal organs. The belly of the deer had not been opened. The   opening was up between the neck and rib cage. The predator made a hole large enough to stick its arm in and apparently reached down from above the rib cage and pulled out the organs. 
        The loud vocalizations, tree thrashing, chattering and whistling outside the house at night are the most noticeable, recurring features. There was considerably more noise during the night the deer was killed.

                [Twelve hours later, more details:]

        I was on the phone with the people at the
        house last night for a few hours.   I was asking
       questions and listening to what was   
       happening.         
               Things got very hectic at one point. These
       guys were actually shooting from the porch
       while I was on the phone.

               From my conversations yesterday and
       early this morning with the residents, we think
       we figured out why this situation is so extreme. 
               The underlying cause seems to be that 
       lots and lots of deer congregate on Tim's 
       property. He's got thirty acres in the mountains
       and he plants Austrian snow peas all over the
       property, especially near the house, because
      deer go crazy for them this time of year. People
      plant these plants specifically to attract deer. It
      makes it easier to hunt.  

            Many deer come to feed on his property.
      There's a deer overpopulation problem in the
      area to start with, so his property is apparently
      an effective magnet for deer.  There are so
      many deer that he doesn't even have to get 
      off his porch to go “hunting.”  He bags lots of
      deer on his own property and has been doing it
      for a few years now.  He said that on some
      occasions the deer carcasses were snatched
      away by something.

           A few times Tim ran out after it, but it would
      always flee into the woods. The first time he got
      a good look at it was the night he shot at it –a 
      few nights ago.  The most baffling thing for all of
      us was why these things weren't running away
      after being shot at. They'd pull back a bit in the 
      trees, then move to a different part of the
      hillside and could be seen through the brush
     when the spotlights reflected off their eyes.

           I asked Tim if he ever spotlights deer at
     night from his porch. He does. Then we
     established that indeed, MOST of the time when 
     he's spotlighting the woods and shooting from
     his porch is when he's shooting at deer, not
     Sasquatch.  So if the animals who aren't
     running away from the loud gunshots are some
     kind of predator that's been in the area for a
     while, then those predators may have noticed
     that sometimes after those spotlighting-gunshot
     incidents, a wounded deer would be
     struggling up the hill trying to get away... and will
     be much easier to catch.

            Deer will always take off running when they
     hear gunshots, especially within fifty yards, that's
     how they know they weren't seeing deer's eyes 
     while the shooting was going on.

          Tim sounded stunned when I explained the
     deer connection. He slurred out a long steady
     "...oh my God," as if it finally all made sense to 
     him.  The Sasquatch might be hanging around
     the  property waiting to grab a wounded deer. I 
     explained that these predators might not
     understand that they are the intended targets
     now, because all they would see is a spotlight 
     shining through the trees toward them, then a 
     very loud BANG from an assault rifle.  The
     animals may be expecting to see wounded deer
     running toward them up the hill.  They may have
     watched that pattern for years.

          It's possible they either don't realize that 
     there are bullets whizzing by them, or they've
     gotten used to it. At that range the shot is so
     loud you wouldn't hear a bullet hitting the trees
     next to you. And they wouldn't see when the
     guns are pointing right at them because the
     spotlights would be in their eyes at that moment.
     It may appear to be business as usual with all 
     the shooting going on.

 

    Eventually, the situation de-escalated when the residents simply stopped killing deer; over time, the visitations waned and then ceased altogether.

    A polar opposite approach is advocated and practiced by Robert W. Morgan, Sasquatch researcher for more than half a century, and is pursued as well, each in her or his own way, by all the researchers profiled in this book.  “I had my first encounter in 1957,” Morgan recalls
   
      I had just gotten off a cruise in the Pacific with the Navy.  I headed for the
mountains.  I was in Mason County, WA.  I heard something coming down in the brush behind me.  It was rustling around, and as I moved to one side, I started seeing black patches of hair, and naturally thought it

was a bear.  So I stepped out and I yelled, and everything went dead silent. 

       I yelled again, and it started running at an angle, and it got up the slope to me.  And finally it got to a point and turned around, and I saw it from just above the navel, up.  And I’m looking into the eyes of a Bigfoot.  Being a  kid from Ohio, I’d never heard of this, so to me I was looking at a gorilla, but it was the most expressive, human-like gorilla.  His face looked much more like a man’s than a gorilla’s, but he was real hairy all over, so that

was all I could think.  The look on his face was almost comical, because he was as surprised as I was.

 

         Morgan’s The Bigfoot Pocket Field Manual lays out “sincere counsel” for achieving “passive contact” with this species.  Never carry a firearm, never even raise a camera to your face, because “most of them have observed this same behavior in hunters.” 

      Once you have chosen a research site, it’s time to create a provocative routine. Your objective is to be non-threatening enough to be tolerated, yet so different from the scads of usual hikers as to warrant investigation.  Cultivate that difference in your own way.  Be

creative, but never be loud, intrusive, disruptive, or flamboyant.  Make yourself and your routines familiar to the Forest Giants. Find a way to gently announce your presence even while hiking.  Try whistling or

singing a tune now and then.  Walk casually enough to allow your own observations but don’t bother trying to sneak around because your actions will remind them of hunters.  The reason to do all this is to deliberately come under their scrutiny.  The most difficult aspect of this passive research method is the interminable waiting:  It may take months, even years, of repeated visits to your research site in order to produce results.

         To be a gracious host to a Forest Giant, you must first design the party with careful attention to detail.  Consider your invited guests’ requirements:  only a friendly and mutually curious atmosphere, the

absence of loud noises, quick motions, and sudden lights.  Your invitation begins the moment you drive down your first tent peg.  However, do not imagine that you will be present the first few times a Forest Giant might

drop by.  While the Giants are nosey characters, they are considerate yet

ghostly visitors.  They can appear and vanish in a heartbeat.  Unless you are sharp, you may not know they have visited in your absence unless you set your stage with precision.  Your observation camp must be neat and tidy to an extreme approaching anal retentiveness.  Prepare to set out some passive lures that will give you a perceptible sign if they are “inspected.” 

         Your lures should be too subtle to be noticed even by [human] experts because they will consist of items that are commonly found in camps. 

         Instead of being cleverly hidden to snap or snare you guest, your harmless lures will be even more cleverly place in the open, yet the slightest touch will be easily detected.  For example, I routinely place on a stump or a flat

rock my steel signal mirror, an open plastic case containing aromatic soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, dental floss, and my razor, each arranged with its tip touching a curved line that I faintly etch onto the rock or the stone with

the point of my knife.  I sometimes leave a book or a magazine, anchored by stones, open to a page that might catch a Giant’s eye.  I use National Geographic or similar publications that contain images of gorillas,

chimpanzees, or orangutans in gentle contact with humans.  I prefer photos of Jane Goodall or the kindly folks at The Gorilla Foundation as they work with Koko. 

          If you play recorded music, be prudent:  make it soft enough that no

human being outside of the immediate perimeter can hear it; you must not

attract hikers.  Also, never succumb to playing popular music because that will place you in the same category as the usual campers.  Avoid that comparison at all costs.  Why are you doing this?  Because that music will

serve as your trademark with them, and when they hear you play it, they’ll know who you are.  Remember, you are involved in a protracted, meticulous chess game in which nobody ever scores a check mate and no

pieces are lost.  

 
       I myself have applied some of these recommendations in my Vermont Ravine Project, and have reaped exciting, preliminary results.
      We could continue to survey, in summary fashion, scores of further cases and styles of habituation, each with its own peculiar context-related twists; but instead, this book will go into depth about just a few. 

    First, though, we’ll take a look at the work of the research group that has managed to pull this creature out of the realm of popular myth and into the light of consistent, empirical study, learning how—throughout North America—to communicate with it in a preliminary, very simple manner, and even, to some extent, how to predict its behavior. Attending expeditions with the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization became my avenue to learning the basics of Sasquatch behavior, and discovering the existence, and the nature, of habituation sites. 

    The stage has been set, finally, for a deeper-level interaction, and mutual education, between our two primate species—homo sapiens and Sasquatch—in the tradition of the decades-long, exquisitely detailed projects of Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. 

    Peanuts…was feeding about fifteen feet away when he suddenly stopped and turned to stare directly at me.  Spellbound, I returned his gaze—a gaze that seemed to combine elements of inquiry and of acceptance.  Peanuts ended this unforgettable moment by sighing deeply, and slowly resumed feeding.

    Two years after our exchange of glances, he became the first gorilla ever to touch me…(Gorillas in the Mist)