Taking Refuge in the Cryptids.

I have time to make a post tonight, but as luck – good or bad – would have it, I have nothing to make a post about because nothing of consequence has befallen me today. I suppose I could augment the post stats to the tune of one by saying:

The views near and far around the Shire today were decorated by countless tracts of arboreal gold glowing in the still, misty air.

I like that sort of autumn day. They’re atmospheric, especially if you can find a wood to walk through. I’m a little suspicious of woodland these days, though. My forays into the nature of reality have led me to consider the question of cryptids, you see, and I watched a video last night about the strange sightings on Cannock Chase.

Cannock Chase is a large area of forest and heath not far from where I was brought up, and one of the subjects of such sightings was of the creature known as ‘dogman’ (although they referred to it as a vampire in the documentary, which is something quite different and just goes to show how much ignorance is frequently encountered in the documentary form.)

The point is, however, that dogman is pretty big, horribly black, and presumed to be homicidal when it’s hungry. It isn’t something you’d want to encounter while wandering through the woods on a still, misty day in autumn. But fortunately there was an expert on hand to give us the rational explanation for dogman sightings.

He said that a Red Deer stag (cut to a picture of the Monarch of the Glen replete with antlers) can look surprisingly like a dogman when it stands on its rear legs after dark. Are Red Deer stags in the habit of standing on their rear legs after dark? Does something with the head of a deer (replete with antlers) really look like a hound from hell with a humanoid body? I suspect that this particular expert was not being entirely rational (and it’s not the first time I’ve said that) and had probably been gorging on Far Side cartoons.