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Crushed flowers, snapped branches, a tuft of hair with downy underwool, and an eight foot tall figure wandering past a window. Does it all add up to a Sasquatch sighting in the small Yukon community of Teslin?

Well nobody really knows, but residents did send that tuft of hair to Philip Merchant of the Yukon Environment Department for testing. According to the Ottawa Citizen, these are Merchant's intitial findings:

The hair isn't hollow, ruling out moose and caribou. It's too long to be horse, and the sample also includes a downy underfur, which rules out humans -- and perhaps other two-footed creatures.

"Underwool is a bovid, cervid thing in mammals, then we probably can rule out primate," said Mr. Merchant, a wildlife technician. "But I don't know. Are sasquatches primates?"

That leaves a few options: grizzly bear, muskox and bison.

Merchant is planning on running a few more tests on the hair, but says that it will be impossible to ascertain the origin of the creature without DNA testing and the Yukon government is reluctant to spend taxpayer's money on a search for a mythological creature.

There is no word on whether a fund for Sasquatch DNA testing has been set up for private donations - but one can safely assume that it is coming.

Expat Talkback:
Have you ever had an close encounter of the third kind? UFOs, ghosts, Ogopogo, Bigfoot, or otherwise?