HAY RIVER
"I think it's a human hand."
The mystery object, possibly the foot of a beaver, is about the size of a normal lighter. - Myles Dolphin/NNSL photo
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That’s the first thought that went through Charles Changizi’s head in the early hours of Jan. 8, after he’d thawed a mystery object his dog Rhonda found behind Diamond Jenness Secondary School.
“We go out there for a walk every morning when I get back from my nightshift, before I go to bed,” Changizi said. “She usually disappears for a bit, then she comes back when I whistle for her. This time, she came back with a weird white ball in her mouth.”
At first, Changizi thought it was a baby rabbit. Rhonda and another dog usually chase them along the river, but fail to catch them.
Because of the darkness and fatigue, Changizi couldn’t identity the mysterious object, which was covered in snow and ice, so he brought it home and thawed it out in his sink.
“Holy crap, I thought. This is a human hand,” he said.
Changizi woke up his nephew for a second opinion.
“He thought it was a hand, too, and that’s when I started freaking out,” he said.
At that point, he started becoming anxious and the absurdity of the moment won him over. Should he call the RCMP? Was his apartment about to become a crime scene?
Before making the call, however, he wanted yet another opinion so he called a friend over to the ‘scene’.
Initially, she thought it was a human hand as well, but upon further investigation, they concluded that it had to belong to an animal.
“We did some research online and we found some pictures that bore resemblance to a bear paw,” Changizi said.
Before going to bed, Changizi decided to share pictures of the object with his Facebook friends, in the hopes that someone would be able to identify it.
Ever the storyteller, Changizi presented his morning’s developments in three separate 'chapters', to the delight of many.
“It looks like E.T.’s hand,” someone joked.
The Hub e-mailed pictures of the object to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources on Friday afternoon, but they weren’t able to immediately identify it.
“We can’t identify what it is from the photos. We don’t think it’s a bear,” said department spokesperson Judy McLinton.
The Hub then contacted Hay River Renewable Resources Officer Albert Bourque, who had seen the pictures and had an idea of what it was.
“The tarsal bones are long and look like fingers, I thought it was a bear at first,” he said.
“But bears have heels and there is no semblance of a heel on this. A beaver’s equivalent of a thumb is much reduced in size, so I am 99 per cent sure this corresponds to the left hind foot of a beaver.”
Changizi has no intention of throwing the foot away. In fact, he plans on using it to his advantage.
“A friend of mine has played jokes of me before. So I’m hoping she’ll have the same reaction that I did when she sees this,” he said with a mischievous smile.
