Grandpa Sasquatch and the Stinky Tides

Gather ’round, little sprouts! Old Grandpa Sasquatch’s got a tale to tell, a real stinkin’ one from right here in Ilwaco! Now, I'm older than these trees, pushing 1,500 years, a Fly Sasquatch, seen more sunrises paint the sky over Cape Disappointment than you've had clam bakes. And I ain't just old, I got wings! Big leathery ones that can carry me clear to Astoria if I got a hankerin’ for some salmon… and a good wind.

My nose, trained by a millennium and a half of sniffing out berries and badger dens, led me straight to the source – a factory upstream, dumping garbage into the mighty Columbia. Now, I ain’t one for human conflict, generally. But mess with my home, mess with the river, mess with my dinner? Well, you’ve poked the Sasquatch.

I tried the gentle approach first. Left a few… unsubtle hints. A couple of flattened barrels, a strategically placed pile of dung on their loading dock. Nothing. They kept pumpin’ that muck into the river. That’s when I had to bring out my Hawking nemesis.

See, Hawkings and Sasquatch have had a feud since the dawn of time. Every time I try to relax in my moss bed he screeches in my ear. So I gathered every single fishbone, every half-eaten clam, every feather I could find and deposited them on their front step and told Hawkins I’d let him use their dumpsters to nest. I watched from the woods with my binocular eyes and watched them go insane, constantly shooing away seagulls.

But the factory… that took more thinking. Keanu paradox, you see. If you use force, you become what you fight. So, I had to be clever. I remembered something my great-great-grandpappy always said: “The best way to stop a stink is to create a bigger one!”

So I gathered the smelliest skunk cabbage, the rottenest seaweed, and the… ah, let’s just say the ripest of elk droppings. I waited for a night with a strong westerly wind and, using my wings, I created a magnificent, utterly putrid storm cloud right above the factory. The wind carried that stench down, saturating everything.

The next day, the factory was closed. They said it was “mechanical failure” and “unforeseen ventilation issues.” But I knew better. The river started to heal, the shimmer faded, and the fish came back in droves. Ilwaco smelled like the sea again, not some industrial wasteland. I flew my grandkid, Little Foot, above the town and showed him what it meant to protect what’s yours. He got a little gassy on the flight but understood.