The Boy Who Cried Bigfoot

We are driving up Big Tujunga Canyon Road into the San Gabriel Mountains when my wife says, “I don’t believe this. A beautiful Sunday ahead of us and you are taking us on a search for Bigfoot ?”

“It’ll only take a couple of hours,” I say, “and then we’ll go out for a nice lunch.”

“We’re liable to be dead by lunch,” she says.

We pass the last few homes along the roadside, then a Little League field, a juvenile detention camp and a man walking his goose.

“Did you see that?” she says. “The man walking his goose? That’s a bad luck sign if I ever saw one.”

She loves to spook me. Ex-Catholics never completely lose their fear of the devil, hell and evil omens implicit in a man walking his goose on the roadside.

Satan in shorts and a T-shirt, followed by the Goose from Hell.

The walkie-talkie on my lap crackles static. I pick it up and say, “Bigfoot 1, this is Bigfoot 2, did you . . . er . . . call me?”

I don’t know how to ask in radio talk if anyone in the pickup truck leading us had tried to contact me.

“Negative,” is the reply.

My wife shakes her head. “ Bigfoot 2 ? You poor man, what has a lifetime of writing done to you?”

It’s this way. A guy who works in a bread factory was driving along Upper Big Tujunga Canyon Road one day when he saw a creature towering over the chaparral about 150 yards off the highway.

This somehow came to the attention of part-time free-lance video journalist Matt Moneymaker, a student at UCLA. Matt passed the information on to Danny Perez, founder and, as far as I can determine, sole member of the Norwalk Center for Bigfoot Studies.

They gave me a call and here we are, standing on the side of the road, looking for signs of a creature I don’t even believe in.

My wife has taken a few photographs and is now standing by, as she puts it, to drive for help should Bigfoot decide I am little more than a walking taco.

I have written of Perez before but had never seen him in his sasquatch-hunting outfit. It is an olive-drab jumpsuit that bears the name of his organization. Some of the letters have been ripped off in past Bigfoot expeditions, however, so it reads, “Center or Bi foot Studies.”

The young man who spotted the creature shall remain nameless. I don’t feel anyone under 21 ought to have to live down a Bigfoot sighting so early in life. Call him Fred.

The creature he saw was 8 feet tall and reminded Fred of either a grizzly bear or a camper with a pack on his back. There are similarities, I suppose, if the camper was naked and covered with hair.

“Do you use alcohol or drugs?” Perez asks somberly.

It’s part of his Bigfoot investigative technique.

“Naw,” Fred says.

“Have you ever had psychiatric treatment?”

“Naw.”

“Let’s take a look,” Perez says.

The two of us start down the hillside into shoulder-high brush. I hear my wife say, “So long, Bigfoot 2.” I can’t get the Goose from Hell out of my mind.

“I tend to believe he saw something,” Perez says as we struggle through the undergrowth. A creek lies ahead. “There’s water here and every living creature needs a drink.”

“That sounds pretty good to me too,” I say. I’m not thinking about water.

Dead vines puncture my left leg. Blood spots appear on my new Levi’s Dockers and I wonder vaguely if Bigfoots (Bigfeet?) respond to the smell of blood.

I have been assured they only eat mice, lizards and snakes, into which category journalists do not generally fall. But who can say for sure that the monster might not want to add columnist du jour to his otherwise humdrum menu?

Perez has been hunting sasquatch for 15 years. He regards it as a serious, ongoing investigation he undertakes when he isn’t wiring houses or selling insurance policies.

This is abundantly clear as he pecks grimly through the chaparral, looking for footprints, bits of hair or Bigfoot fecal matter. I’m not looking that hard for the fecal matter, but I’m sure we’ll spot it if it’s around.

As it turns out, we find nothing but dozens of broken beer bottles and some strands of nylon I mistake for hair.

“I’m not saying he wasn’t there,” Perez says when we regain the safety of the highway. “I’m just saying we never saw him.”

As we drive away, my wife says she knows I had my heart set on finding a sasquatch and she’s sorry I didn’t.

“Maybe next time . . . Bigfoot 2,” she adds, suppressing a giggle. “Over and out.”

We eat at a Greek restaurant in Palmdale called Pozi’s. I order Goose from Hell but have to settle for stuffed grape leaves and a pita bread sandwich instead.