Cooke, MN – 49-year-old drywaller Douglas “Bevo” Swanson has decided to see extra-terrestrial evidence everywhere, ending a lifetime of seeing evidence of Sasquatch everywhere. The switch has been a jarring one for the divorced father of two.
“When you stop talking about Bigfoot for hours on end and start talking about aliens for hours on end, you find out who your friends really are,” said a solitary Swanson while nursing a Milwaukee’s Best at Sportsman’s Last Chance bar.
Kyle McDonough and Edith Horcox sit on the opposite end of the bar occasionally glancing up at Swanson with a derisive look. Before the switch they were inseparable, spending entire evenings discussing the reasons Bigfoot has never been captured, grainy images of the cryptid, and related conspiracy theories.
“I don’t feel bad for him,” Horcox says during an interview in her mobile home surrounded by her thirteen cats. “He did this to [himself]. We spent years establishing ourselves as the top Sasquatch experts in the county and he’s just throwing all that away so he can go chase Dr. Spock. Whatever.”
Bartender “Mac” Shogowski agrees, “It’s a little sad to see Bevo by himself nowadays, especially because he wants to talk to me about that ET stuff. Thank Jesus I got other customers. It all got weird after Ron passed.”
“Ron Muskovich died in a motorcycle accident in May,” McDonough points at a photograph tacked to the wall of his hunting shed. It shows a bearded man in his sixties arm-in-arm with Horcox, Swanson, and McDonough. “We was like the Three Musketeers of Bigfoot, you know. Ron was a serious scientist about all this stuff. He sort of grounded us, you know.”
Swanson gets a distant look in his eyes at the mention of Muskovich. “I remember a few weeks after Ron died, we were walking the trail and Edith pointed at some broken branches and is like, ‘That’s definitely the way Squatch woulda broken them,’ and I’m like hold on. You can’t just look at a branch and jump to the conclusion that Sasquatch broke it. Isn’t it more likely that an alien broke it?”
Horcox drops her head into her hands while discussing the moment. “It was out of nowhere. We barely spoke the rest of the hike. We just reset our Bigfoot traps and went home. Later that night Bevo starts blowing up our email with alien stuff.”
“Abduction this and flying saucer that,” says McDonough, “It’s like, dude, this is messed up. Everything’s not E.T. Does he know how ridiculous that sounds?”
“Do you know how much money the U.S. government has spent on UFO research?” Swanson says, accidentally knocking over his beer as he gesticulates wildly, “The government is not about to waste money if they don’t have to. They know. The evidence is all around us. Look at the technology we received from aliens. I don’t see Sasquatch building Eiffel Towers and pyramids.”
“Ancient Egyptians were aliens, Tesla was an alien, blah blah blah. Call me when you’ve got a bag of Tesla’s scat,” says Horcox, “He’s really lost it. And not just his mind. Trish moved out three weeks ago and she’s totally blocking him.”
Swanson’s ex-girlfriend Trisha Wierwood took her eleven-year-old daughter Kaitlyn and moved in with her mother in nearby Leander after an altercation. She turned down my request for an interview.
Swanson takes a long pull from a fresh bottle before speaking, “I’m not proud of what happened, but it’s not entirely my fault. I’m trying to have a serious conversation with her about our neighbor’s dog going nuts the night before and how stupid I was ‘cause I used to think it was Squatch, which in retrospect, makes no sense. So, I’m explaining to her how reptilians have, not only the ability to shapeshift, but can completely disappear and she says, ‘Why can’t Bigfoot be an alien and then I can go back to talking to Kyle and Edie?’ and I’m like, ‘Are you mocking me? Am I a joke to you?’ I guess I got in her face a little and Kaitlyn starts crying and it was blown way out of proportion.”
Closing time. Mac leads Swanson out the door and locks up. I drop Swanson off at his trailer and am about to drive off when he motions to me to follow him. He points next to his carport where his garbage cans have been tipped over, the contents strewn about in a five-foot radius.
“I told you! Now what do you think?” he waves his arms about as he scans the night sky.