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If you live in British Columbia and walk the beaches, keep an eye out for feet. It seems that in the last decade there have been 13 different disembodied feet found. Ewww. A New York Times story indicates none of the remains were a result of foul play... and may have been unfortunate hikers or people doing other things that led to their death. Regardless, if your dog walks the beach, pay attention to what they pick up!
Another human foot washes ashore in Canada. That makes 13
By Matthew Haag, New York Times News Service
December 12, 2017
The exceptionally high tides this time of the year off
British Columbia can turn the rocky western coast of Vancouver Island into a
graveyard. Bones from gray whales, sea lions and killer whales wash ashore,
piling on the beach along fallen evergreens.
But on Thursday morning, Taz, a 6-year-old Rottweiler, sensed
something different about a bone tangled in a bed of kelp. Taz darted away from
her owner, Mike Johns, to inspect it, sniffing a piece that jutted out on a
beach in the hamlet of Jordan River.
Her instincts were right. Johns followed behind her and
pushed away the kelp, revealing his dog’s find: a tibia and fibula attached to
a left human foot with a white ankle sock in a black running shoe.
In any other part of the world, a sneaker with a human foot
washing ashore might be a terrifying discovery, enough to frighten residents
and stir fears of a gruesome murder or a serial killer on the loose. But not in
British Columbia, where these discoveries have become so common that they are
tracked. It was the 13th foot to wash ashore since 2007.
“It’s just a freak thing that it happened to be here,” said
Johns, 56, who lives in Jordan River, a surfer’s village about 70 miles
southwest of Vancouver, Canada.
Johns said he called the police and then used a stick to pick
up what remained of the leg, carried it back to his property and locked it in
his greenhouse. He worried that if it remained on the beach, it would have
washed back into the ocean or attracted the bear hanging around town or an
eagle from the nearby nest.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police retrieved the remains on
Friday, the authorities said, and they are being inspected by the Coroners
Service of British Columbia. “We’ll try to get a DNA sample,” said Andy Watson,
a spokesman for the service.
During winter months, British Columbia experiences what are
known as “king tides,” unusually high tides that can cause coastal flooding.
The tides, along with strong currents and the fact that shoes are buoyant, mean
that the remains could belong to someone as far north as Alaska or as far south
as Oregon, Watson said.
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“Our search won’t stay in Canada,” he said.
Watson said it was too soon to determine how the person died.
Since the first severed foot was discovered in August 2007,
the cases have caught the attention and imagination of Canadians across the
country. By July 2008, five feet had been retrieved in the Strait of Georgia,
part of the Pacific Ocean between Vancouver and Washington state.
The 12th foot was discovered in February 2016, a right foot
in a black and blue New Balance sneaker that was found about 20 miles west of
last Thursday’s discovery. (One foot discovered in 2008 turned out to be a
hoax.) The authorities have identified
eight of the 12 feet as belonging to six people, and none died by foul play.
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