Bigfoot and Chupacabra: Perfect Together

(Jonathan Ryan posting for Jen Schlameuss-Perry.)

Very often, people think that working for a Church must be so nice and calm and easy. It’s not. It’s great—I love it—but on a daily basis we deal with the very serious realities of people’s lives: death, illness, poverty and disaster, mental and emotional issues, addiction; anything that can cause distress to an individual or family. There’s loads of happy stuff, too, but the weight of the reality of people’s lives can be borderline crushing at times.

That’s why I love TV. When the only stuff that’s on is reruns of sitcoms that I’ve seen too many times, I turn to “reality shows” like “Ancient Aliens,” or various monster-hunting shows. One night, when I was feeling pretty wiped out, my husband and I came across “Mountain Monsters.” If you haven’t seen it, it’s a group of hillbillies who hunt local monsters in the Appalachian region—not to harm them, but to prove that they are real.

This particular night, the crew was trying to catch Bigfoot (big surprise) and the Hellhound. It was fine, mindless entertainment. But then one of the guys said something that, if the past me was given a multiple choice quiz to guess which thing the future me would never experience because it was too crazy, I would have failed that quiz.

*Sample Quiz*

Choose the item that will never be part of your experience:

A)   you will tackle a parishioner on the front lawn of the Church

B)   a random, frantic stranger will run up your office, hand you a statue of the Infant of Prague and run away yelling, “Please–just take this!”

C)   you will hear the phrase “This is just like that time Bigfoot and the Chupacabra were working together!”

D)   you will be exposed to a strange radiation that will finally activate your superpowers

Naturally, I would have picked “C” because it’s always “C.” But, that is wrong! One of the guys actually said, “This is just like that time Bigfoot and the Chupacabra were working together!” He said this because A) he believes that Bigfoot and the Chupacabra were working together and B) he now believes that Bigfoot and the Hellhound are working together.

I have to admit that part of me (probably the unbalanced, crazy part) wants to believe that there could be creatures out there that science hasn’t discovered yet. And maybe right now they are the things of myth and legend—maybe exaggerated—but something like it could be real. I like to think that faeries and Narnia and things like that are real, too. So, I have almost no right to say anything here. But, that one phrase tickled me so—it was just the lack of reality I needed to break the heaviness of the day. It actually ministered to me. Anyway, who am I to say? Maybe Bigfoot and Chupacabra could work together…

Jen Schlameuss-Perry is a massive fan of sci-fi, cartoons and superheroes and loves to write about them in light of her Catholic tradition. She currently works for a Catholic Church and practices martial arts, cares for her family and pets and writes in her spare time. Check out some of Jen’s other stuff on her Facebook page or her website.