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When Is A Yeti Not A Yeti ?
Of all the names given to various monsters throughout the world, the most absurd ever has to be "The Yardley Yeti." Why? I hear you ask. Well, imagine the scene. It's the Fall of 2006 and Bucks County is being prowled by a sinister creature. The name dubbed by the press and as told by the witness who saw it, a Mr. Jonathan Maberry, certainly has a ring to it, and yet there was one major...indeed, very major flaw. The animal was a mangy fox!! Yes, we all have gotten used to so-called mysterious beasts being explained away as hoax or misinterpretation and other elusive creatures solved just as we were getting all excited, but imagine the confusion when the Philly press among others got hold of the story and monster-fever hit the headlines.
Indeed, "exclusive" photographs were posted on the reputable Cryptomundo website, cryptozoology being the study of newly discovered creatures, possibly extinct yet still surviving animals, etc., but the Yardley Yeti was far from a monster story.
Mr. Maberry spotted the creature in a parking lot in Bucks County near New Hope and snapped several photos of the animal, stating that he didn't think it looked anything like a fox. A fox? What's that got to do with a Yeti? At first we thought that the Yardley monster may have been one of the feared Albatwitches, or "apple snatchers" said to roam Lancaster County as hairy humanoids, but no, this was to be one of the least monstrous tales of a monster of all time!
The biggest mystery of all was how the mangy fox had become a mystery, or how such a poor, malnourished beast became a brief celebrity, worrying proof that witnesses are all too keen to misinterpret, and the press all too keen to fall for it. Similar events transpired around the same time throughout the United States when alleged "goatsuckers," or indeed the mythical Chupacabra, were photographed, but showed nothing more than hybrids and mangy coyotes.
As if the true Yeti of mythology isn't ridiculed enough, the poor Abominable Snowman now has to share the headlines with a hungry fox!
The photos can be seen at Cryptomundo HERE.
Sources:
Cryptomundo.com
Free Republic.com
Image Credit: Flickr user gruntzooki
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Hey, I see the ol' Yardley Yeti has resurfaced.
Here's some backstory on it.
The nickname was coined by Bucks County journalists J D Mullane for a news story about frequent sightings in the region. JD went for alliteration rather than accuracy in the nickname...and though it doesn't describe the critter, the name stuck.
The species has been in debate for a while. Don Polec of Action News/Channel 6 did a segment on it. The version he saw was much large, closer in size to a German Shepherd. The one my wife and I saw was much smaller.
After the news segment, and shortly after we posted photos on Cryptomundo, a lot of folks weighed in on what it was. The leading theory is that it's a red fox with mange. That worked for me; however when I was doing a book signing in Jenkintown town vet Adam Denish (who is an expert on exoitics) said that it wasn't a fox.
I'm a writer not a zoologist, so I defer to him on this one.
Lots of folks have seen it. The highest percentage still hold to the 'mangy fox' assessment. Some thing that it's a coyote (which we have in Bucks County), or some crossbreed.
I'm easy either way. It's interesting and I've discussed this as an example of how urban legends are created and perpetuated. People see something they don't quite recognize or understand, and until someone recovers a body or captures a live animal the myserious 'what is it' element of the story continues to grow.
Thanks for posting this, Neil.
-Jonathan Maberry
www.jonathanmaberry.com
Many thanks for the comments.
I personally can't see much beyond a canid of some sort, and a mangy one at that, certainly nothing at all mysterious to me, but of course, the story becomes the stuff of legend due to the misinterpretations, and poor press coverage...as is always the case, but I guess it's down to the poor media speculation that some legends are born.