The Yeti Uprising: An IPMA Adventure for Christmas 2013 Page 2

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  It seemed all through dinner Joshua’s knee bounced up and down uncontrollably. His mother had him talk to the doctors more than once but even though he thought Josh might have a bit of ADHD he didn’t need any medicine for it. That’s good! Josh’s mother had said at the time because she’d heard from a friend that their child got headaches all the time with the medicine he’d been prescribed. But the excitement of the little fuzzy thing was too much to keep in.

  Josh couldn’t tell his mother, nor his father. It just didn’t feel right. No, this was something he thought he’d need a professional’s help with. Perhaps a teacher, but no, he didn’t want to wait until the next day in Mr. Faber’s science class and be made a laughing stock if his teacher didn’t believe a word he said. So the cube steak and mac n’ cheese was shoveled in at an alarming rate, causing his father to scold him and remind him to chew one-hundred times for each bite.

  Finally supper out of the way, Josh dashed upstairs to the den and booted up his mother’s computer on which she did her book keeping. While it booted over what seemed like an eternity, the little boy couldn’t help but peek out the window repeatedly just to make sure he wasn’t missing something extraordinary like he nearly might have early that afternoon if he hadn’t been attentive to the slight movements and rustling noises.

  The glass was frigid cold and his breath fogged quickly and then started to freeze near the old seals on the pane. He wiped absent-mindedly at the opaque covering and stared into the cul-de-sac and beyond the houses across the way into the small line of trees that grew along where Rouge had narrowed to almost stream status.

  Where was that thing going? He wondered. Then finally the operating system on the computer had booted and played its little jingle that indicated it was now awake and ready to grant all the answers to the universe. Quickly he opened three separate windows and began a search in each one. On one he started a search based on descriptive words: hairy, small, white. And then as he thought for a moment he added the word, magic. In the second search engine he started a search for mysterious creatures of lower Michigan. And on the third he had to consider for a moment. As thoughts played across his mind various cartoons and television shows he’d seen flashed across his quickly moving memories and thoughts. Among all the inputs a word crept to the forefront. It was a word he knew he’d heard in a cartoon but couldn’t quite place a finger one which on. It was cryptid. What he wanted to know about was a cryptid: an animal that has been generally considered real or possible but not by any scientific community.

  The little fuzzball must be a cryptid. Joshua was one-hundred percent sure the thing was real, even if it’s explosion in size meant something fishy was going on. So he figured that meant others must have seen it too. Maybe, if he were lucky, most people just hadn’t spoken up about it, afraid of being embarrassed. But he knew that on the internet, there’s always someone to be found who is willing to talk about the unbelievable. So for search number three he entered the following: cryptid, small, white, big foot.

  He wasn’t sure why he threw in the words big foot but he was beginning to formulate in his mind as he glanced through page link after page link on each of the searches an idea that maybe the reason sasquatch were so hard to find proof of them was that they weren’t really what they seemed. Could it be that there really are sasquatch, but that they were magic? The whole giant-sized version seemed to fit his developing theory perfectly. After all, he knew real creatures like the cobra, the frilled lizard and even various birds and rodents would puff themselves up to look bigger.

  Josh considered the puffer fish and decided to start a fourth tab on his browser to search for: cryptid animals that grow in size as a defense. If he’d never seen a puffer fish before in an aquarium he’d visited on the west coast once, he never would have believed someone trying to explain just how big they got. Of course, the change in features and jump from a foot in height to tall enough to make a grab at Josh’s feet on a platform twenty-five feet up had him convinced that his little miniature sasquatch must indeed be magical.

  Continuing to switch between searches and check each page Josh hardly recognized that he was getting past his bedtime. Mom would be in soon to cut the power and send him to his room. He tried his hand at speed-reading as best he could to get through as many pages as possible before that happened. He found a wiki about Yeti and realized if his theory was correct he should probably start referring to his find as one instead of a Sasquatch. It was white and found in a snowy environment, so even though tiny, he was sure that’s what it was.

  He’d also found some oddball references to the use of magic in faerie creatures to disguise themselves and hence the reason they were so difficult to “see the unseen”. As the page counts racked up, the majority of individual cryptid investigators in fact seem to reference the main contributor to the idea of faeries, a man who claimed to be part of some secret global organization whose primary objective was to collect magical artifacts but who on occasion got involved in faerie-human relations. He went by the call name of Special Agent D and had claimed most recently that a pack of goblins had force fed him something that gave him special ability to see faeries. Most of the blog followers at that point from a month or so earlier started berating him as a fake, even some of the most ardent supporters in previous posts. One previous fan had written on just about any of his posts within the last couple weeks retorts such as, Seen any imps lately? And then Special Agent D had gone silent for several days.

  But the thing he found most interesting in the posts is the mention of various magical defenses and disguises. Josh learned about a sort of invisibility or cloaking called shimmer that supposedly many faeries used. He also read suggestions from the fan boy investigators that said sprites and other faeries might be able to disguise themselves as humans. There were so many references in fact, that Joshua couldn’t ignore the track he was following.

  Then, Bingo! He found his evidence for which he was looking. There was a fairly irregular blog from a girl who lived in East Selkirk, Manitoba, Canada who had written a description two years earlier of precisely what he had seen. It was from a girl who went by the name Hattie Me. He copied the text and pasted it into a document to print. For some reason he felt a compulsion to keep it with him, like a security blanket.

  When I saw my first Yeti that I can remember I was only seven years old. But now my little brother and I watch for them every December. He doesn’t see them as good as I can. But he has seen a couple. Sometimes I wonder if they’re actually migrating or something. They’re always moving northward through Bird’s Hill Provincial and then past our home. I’ve seen tracks but when I try to show other people, even my little brother they say they don’t notice anything. One time when we actually went to the campgrounds in the park I saw several of them all together and they seemed to be building something from branches and loose scrap and stuff. It was dark and nose-freezing cold so I couldn’t stay, but whatever it was they were building was gone the next morning.

  I’ve only ever gotten too close to a Yeti twice. Both times they puffed up in size and threatened me. They’ve never hurt me though. I don’t think they like to hurt people. And I know it sounds crazy, but I think they might actually be using a type of magic or something to get so big. Thank goodness both times I got too close there was only one of them! It was by accident the first time and just about made me wet myself. The second time I was trying to sneak up on one and take a picture. I did snap the shot but the only thing in my camera is snow and a little fluff of fuzz in the lower right corner.

  One time I tried to get the police to look at the picture and do a digital analysis of what it might be—I KNOW they can do that sort of stuff. But they just laughed at me. So I’ve decided this year to start recording everything I see and find and then when I have enough proof I’ll turn it over to the authorities.

  Until next year then, Bonne journée! />
  There was no next year. Nor was there any entry from this year. Only a brief blog entry in the spring of last school year that mentioned winning a school essay contest. Josh wondered briefly if Canadians went to school year round. But returning to his task he determined he would reach out to Special Agent D and see what he could find out.

  Joshua registered an account on the forum where D had mostly posted as Junior Yeti and then sent a private message to Agent D. As he heard his mother’s footsteps coming up the stairs he stared at the screen for a bit, as though hoping D would immediately return a message and there it would be, popping up in his inbox.

  But no such luck. Mom entered the room and chewed Josh out a bit and sent him off to brush his teeth and climb into bed. She made some comment about eleven-year-olds being able to manage that sort of personal hygiene on their own normally, and when he was ready she gave him a kiss on the forehead and started turning off the hall lights. Josh could hear his father doing the nightly check of the garage door, the bolts on the front and back doors, and double checking the latches on windows. There were times that Josh was pretty sure he got his supposed Obsessive Compulsive Disorder from him. He wondered if maybe his mild ADHD came from Dad’s side too?

  And then, despite his assumption it would be hard for him to sleep that night, Joshua immediately dreamed of little white fuzz balls leading him by the hand to something exciting.