Normally, a new neighbor would not cause any kind of stir. After all, people pack up and move every day, but this time things were different.

Although a little shy, the new neighbor soon brought news crews and myth debunkers from all around into the tiny town as the local gossip began to circulate about just what the new guy looked like.

It did not take everyone long to realize that the new neighbor who had moved into the woods around Crystal Lake was, indeed, Bigfoot.

"We had some pretty interesting calls on it," Decatur Chief of Police Terry Luker said. "I had one lady call me and I tried to explain to her that it was not a Bigfoot and that it was too small to be a Bigfoot.

"The lady stopped me and she said, 'Well, you know, they have babies, too.''' ery day she hears someone in the restaurant telling their own Bigfoot story.

"He stays right out there," Mickey Metz of Gentry said as he pointed into the woods across Crystal Lake. "Some people still say they can hear him way out over there, but we never see him and I do not stay out after dark."

Paul Austin of Decatur says he remembers the excitement the town went through when Bigfoot was first seen in 2003, but after about a week he did not hear any more about the new neighbor.

"I am not a believer," Austin added.

Kim Strobel of Gravette, however, is a believer and with good reason.

"I believe in him. I have heard him," Strobel said.

While working on a wild-game reserve in Winston, Ore., Strobel and a group of his coworkers heard Bigfoot's howl. When Bigfoot entered the reserve, all of the animals - the lions, the tigers, the monkeys - began howling and hissing and getting extremely nervous in their cages, and then Strobel

The official stance on Decatur's Bigfoot sightings in 2003 is that the monkey-like creature people were getting fleeting glances of around town was actually a baboon that had escaped from the local wilderness safari in nearby Gentry.

Story source: www.nwanews.com