The Yeti and Water
October 29, 2008
We have no way of knowing, but it is undoubtedly true that a multitude of Himalayan wanderers have regretted their assumption that Yetis are afraid of water.
Laughable and unscientific mistake!
Only good taste keeps us from actually laughing, as most of the people who have made this error are dead or “missing.”
A wealth of field reports and peer review studies irrefutably show that the noble Yeti has quite an affinity for water. Why not? The Himalayan Yeti lives surrounded by water in all its liquid, solid, and semi-solid forms!
There is only one condition upon which a Yeti would shy away from water: if it were a rabid cat.
Since science has clearly spoken on the fact that Yetis are not rabid cats, and since there are probably only two or three wizards in the world capable of such a difficult transmogrification, everyone can unburden themselves of the hope that Yetis fear water.
Not to belabor this, but how would a Yeti get rabies anyway? Even the most hydrophobia-addled creature would have enough sense not to try to bite a Yeti. You don’t bite Yetis, they bite you!
This misconception about Yetis and water usually stems from fear more than anything else. No one wants to believe there really is a creature of immense strength, untamable ferocity, and savage appetites that has no documented weaknesses. Even Achilles had a bum heel.
Similar to the individuals hiking in bear country who think that they will just climb a tree if confronted by a hungry bruin, deluded Yeti-country travelers think that hopping in to a stream will be enough to avert their destruction.
This is a sure way to play into the hands of the cunning Yeti.
When the lean winter months push the Yeti to ungovernable hunger, the beast will batter through the ice over lakes and streams to dive for fish. At other times, when the streams are flowing, the devious Yeti will wade into a stream and allow the current to sweep him down unnoticed to where goral and wild sheep are watering. Locals know this, and avoid wading in frigid, rushing rivers because of it.
It was in this very manner that Rupert G. Adlehock of the Amateur Sport Cartography League met his end in the summer of 1926.
Eager to take the light of standardized direction to the peoples of Nepal, Adlehock and a team of fellow League members piloted down a smooth-flowing river in a skiff. During the course of their exploration, the team split up to follow branches that split off from the main body of the stream and went off into various ravines and gullies. His comrades gone off in different directions, Adlehock found himself alone, wandering beside a rivulet that grew larger and more turbulent the further he went.
The Amateur Sport Cartography League has rigid policies about non-members accessing their records, but one of our staff was able to call in a favor from a friend in the League’s highest levels of leadership and gain brief access to their vault. The journal retrieved from the site of Adlehock’s death paints a grisly picture of his demise.
” Stream now rushing violently. Thunderous noise up ahead most likely some trick of the wind in this canyon. Should be meeting Reginald at the top of the next outcropping. Good as place as any to ford the stream I suppose. The water can’t be much higher than my neck. Won’t Reggie be positively green when he sees me waving from the other side of the Adlehock River! “
The League may chalk Adlehock’s death up to poor judgment (being swept over a waterfall be a powerful current), but empirical evidence shows he met a more hideous fate.
Even as Adlehock stepped into the river, he collided with a submerged, fishing Yeti. During that tiniest second of Yeti-Adlehock contact, the beast’s soul exploded into an inferno of rage and hate, and he erupted from the water with Adlehock gripped in his arms.
As he looked into the slavering jaws of the Yeti-just seconds before his body was hurled into the abyss above the waterfall-Adlehock must have known with perfect clarity that the Yeti has no fear of water.
“Not to belabor this, but how would a Yeti get rabies anyway? Even the most hydrophobia-addled creature would have enough sense not to try to bite a Yeti. You don’t bite Yetis, they bite you!”
You know, I feel it’s irresponsible of me to bring it up without a proper citation (the Yeti wing of the museum’s library is, appropriately, in wild disarray), but I recall a particular—and, to my knowledge, unique—case of a Yeti being bitten by a non-Yeti.
The biter, amazingly, was a human—a south-Asian gentleman by the name of… J. A. Runmyar? Something like that. He was an ethnobotanist of sorts, and was doing research on the traditional healing practices of isolated Himalayan peoples. Would he have remained true to his focus on flora…
At any rate, Runmyar was told by the Nepalese locals that “You bite the Yeti, or you die,” and he believed that he was on the trail of some very profound medical treatments, a panacea perhaps. Unfortunately, the ethnobotanist’s grasp of the local dialect was dangerously lacking, and there was fatal subject/object confusion in the statement regarding Yetis and bites. “The Yeti bites you, and you die,” would have been a more accurate translation.
At some point in the next several weeks, Runmyar had the incredible fortune to then find a Yeti, sleeping in a Yeti-meadow. With the characteristic enthusiasm of his profession, Runmyar immediately initiated the testing phase of the Yeti miracle drug. (Although what condition he hoped to cure himself of, I don’t know—hydrophobia, perhaps? It might explain the lack of critical thought.)
The force of his bite was not enough to rouse the Yeti—indeed, I find it difficult to imagine that human teeth could even penetrate through a Yeti’s coat—but it was more than enough to give Runmyar all the Yeti-chems he needed. According to his sherpas, Runmyar’s immediate response after the bite attempt was something like an orgasm—that is, if an orgasm exploded the lower half of your body, and dissolved the back of your skull. Despite all that, Runmyar died smiling. That much the sherpas were certain of.
That the Yeti didn’t wake up makes me suspect the account’s veracity, although I suppose it is well within the realm of possibility that a) Whatever part of the beast’s consciousness remains open to perception during sleep rightfully deemed Runmyar to be of no threat whatsoever, or b) That the Yeti, to some extent, orchestrated the whole thing.
Again, I apologize for the lack of a true citation—it’s lazy academia, and I’ll see if I can’t find an intern to fix that.