Last Wednesday, as part of Zainul Arifin’s column, this editorial appeared:

DATUK Sazmi Miah, please don’t rain on our parade. We want our Bigfoot, real or otherwise, please.

The parliamentary secretary to the Natural Resources and Environment Ministry said there was no evidence – droppings or hair samples, for examples – to suggest the Johor Bigfoot existed. It is a hoax, Sazmi declared.

He also said that since we have only found single footprints, the creature can’t be hopping on one foot all this while.

He has a point there, unless of course, Bigfoot is actually a one-legged creature, or one leg had been amputated in a freak jungle accident.

A reader wrote to this newspaper suggesting that Sazmi was a spoilsport, and was not able to see beyond evidence of bodily discharge and follicular fallouts, to see the advantages of the Bigfoot myth.

Think of the tourism earnings, Cecilia Lee of Johor Baru wrote.

"I think Lee may be right. Think of the Loch Ness monster and how the Scots have been benefiting from tourists lured by the romance of the underwater creatures. While they have been promoting the mystery of the creature to visitors the world over, I am certain half of the people in Edinburgh do not believe it existed."

What’s next? No Santa Claus? On that note, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Source: New Straits Times, Malaysia, December 20, 2006, "We want Bigfoot, real or otherwise"