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A deciduous tree of that size can fall for any number of reasons. WSA listed some and then laughed at himself. Feel free to discount my experience as a an arborist. Discount my 15+ years in the logging/outdoors industry and I can tell you very readily: Trees die and fall down everyday. Knowledge of holding wood drops a tree where you want it. Right where you want it everytime. It's why we're Professionals, It's why we pay insurance, and it's why I get to have an Opinion on this. Giant undocumented hominids leaping from branch to branch? not so much. But Please go with the Flow... It Must be MonKeY. As for the grey thingy: Bark, raccoon or caught up in the moment. (When it boils down to it, it's a third-hand account of evidence that was not properly documented in the first place.)

"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." -Confucious- "Imagination is more important than knowledge." -Einstein- "To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step in knowledge." -Benjamin Disraeli- "Courage is the human virtue that counts most--courage to act on limited knowledge and insufficient evidence. That's all any of us have." -Robert Frost- "But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile." -Nikola Tesla- "The only true wisdom is in knowing that you know nothing." -Socrates-

Well, I was gonna put another Bigfoot driving the Ford F350 with 100' of cable attached to the tree, but I thought you would all think I was making up stories.

I am not saying I know what broke that tree. I'm saying I don't know. So far, that is the most any of us here can say. The reporter of the event has some credibility with me, and my working assumption is it happened as it was related. The fallibility of sense impression can never be discounted, but the nature of the event seems to make that a small possibility. I think the inability to just say, "I don't know.....but I'm continuing to be open to possible answers" causes more dissent and lack of understanding than just about anything around here. Saying you "know" a BF did not do it, when you are equally unable to say with any reasonable certainty what did do it, is not an approach that is ever likely to produce answers and is the exact antithesis of considered inquiry, IMHO, and as ill-advised as saying you "know" an unlisted, unconfirmed species did it. Different sides of the same coin. The coin has three sides though, and always has. Over and over we fall into the trap of the false binary analysis here. Bipto is a guy, and his organization mirrors this as far as I can tell, who understands that just holding out the question until you have proof-positive, is the smart choice. Individual experiences count, but they are not going to hold out the answers for the vast majority of us. This is the way science should be done. His experiences, and all the other experiences we read about, just pose a single question that must be addressed: What is it? For ever instance, like this one here, when you fail to rise to that challenge, you are not moving the ball, and in fact, you are working the opposite. So we have lots of theories about how this could not be this and that. I don't think it could be a meteorite strike either, so let's throw that on the pile. So what?

It would take someone killing a Sasquatch for you to see how sad our civilization is? Where the heck have you been? :-)

I wonder if this "AMA/AAM" that accredits museums, is anything like the FDA that "approves" drugs like Vioxx & "foods" like Aspartame...... I've found that a lot of times "unapproved" may turn out to be the better choice.