FOXSYLVANIA

A new expedition in search of Bigfoot will soon be mounted in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  Sightings of Bigfoot date back centuries, but this time it is hoped for more proof of a Sasquatch than just some grainy film footage of some joker in a costume.  As the researcher declared, “We’re looking for evidence supporting a presence.”

Some in the scientific community believe that Bigfoot is a gigantopithecus, a branch of primitive man believed to have existed 3 million years ago.

I think that I could die happy if positive evidence of Bigfoot, the Loch Ness monster, or aliens was discovered in my lifetime.  I want to believe! 

One advantage that animals have over us is that they live life in the immediate present — and in doing this, spare themselves the anxieties and preoccupations that humans fill most of their lives with.  Recently, one of my dogs needed and underwent surgery for a bladder stone, which caused him to pass blood with his urine.  He had no idea that the surgery was coming, so he didn’t worry about it.  On the day of the surgery, he was just swept along by the events of the day, and when it was over, it was for him as if it had never happened.  It just was, and then it was over.  My pet didn’t worry over his convalescence, either, and indeed it was very difficult to tell that he had even had an operation, so soon was he ripping around afterwards. 

Our mental health would be more enhanced if we would learn from our furry brethren, and try and live more of life in the immediate present.  The past is immutable and can’t be changed or done over, and much of the future is unknown and subsequently uncontrollable.  Living in the present moment is not being short-sighted, but rather Zen-like, for the present moment is of the highest importance.

There are those who would assert that one cannot believe in God and evolution at the same time; well, I certainly do! As Paul Little once observed, being a Christian does not mean kissing your brains goodbye! I believe that God created the world and all that there is in it, but that he operated through the mechanism of evolution. To myself, thinking of divine intelligence as continually operating to refine creation is far more wonderful than thinking of all life as the product of a single static creation. The fact that evolution is a theory doesn’t make it any less of a viable explanation. One cannot see the wind, but its effects are seen and felt. I do not regard belief in God and belief in evolution as mutually exclusive.

“Scientific Creationism” and its more recent cousin, “Intelligent Design” are not science, but are religious doctrine masquerading as science. They do not belong in the classroom. — How many times must the Scopes “Monkey Trial” be re-played?!

Roughly 65 million years ago, an asteroid is thought to have impacted with the earth and caused global climatic changes that brought about the extinction of the dinosaurs and the elevation of mammals to dominance.  It is fascinating to consider that had this event not happened, you might currently be a highly evolved reptile rather than an evolved primate; such a scenario was considered in science fiction works such as West of Eden by Harrison.  It is entirely worthy of consideration that higher sentient life forms on other worlds might be non-mammalian, perhaps like the reptilian Gorn of the Star Trek universe.  If we were reptilian, there wouldn’t be the endless obsession with how one’s hair looked…and rather than the breast fixation of human society, tails or coloration might be a drawing card in a reptilian-dominated world…

Those of us who are furry each possess a distinctive animal spirit that defines us, and gives us particular characteristics.  I am a vulpine, a fox, specifically a red fox, Vulpes fulva in scientific nomenclature.  The notion of guiding animal spirits is rooted in Native American culture, and in the mythologies of many other people as well.  In my mind’s eye, I have reddish brown fur with black fur on my limbs and white fur running from my chest to beneath my chin.  If I allow my fox spirit to dominate me, I may enjoy the heightened senses and physical capabilities associated with the fox. 

We who are furries are not possessed by our animal spirits, but rather coexist with them in a complex , mutually advantageous relationship.  We recognize that there is no such thing as a “dumb animal,” and that every animal is more than the sum of his parts…