Flog It Blog It, Petty About The Yeti.

The regulations governing mountain climbing expeditions in Nepal relating to Yeti!

Yesterday The Thelma and Louise of Blogville aka Pip & Puddles went hunting Big Foot aka The Yeti (here). So today we thought we'd take a look at what to do should you catch one.

Yeti fever was so intense in the 1950s the United States government laid out a set of guidelines on how to hunt the abominable snowman. The US National Archives recently recovered the extraordinary document from its library.

With deadpan seriousness, ‘The regulations governing mountain climbing expeditions in Nepal relating to Yeti was issued.  Abominable Snowman hunters now had to do things by the book.

The American Embassy in Kathmandu issued the memo on November 30, 1959, shortly after it first opened. The document details three Yeti-specific regulations,

1 Royalty of Rs. 5000/- Indian Currency will have to be paid to His Majesty's Government of Nepal for a permit to carry out an expedition in search of Yeti.

2 In case 'Yeti' is traced it can be photographed or caught alive but it must not be killed or shot at, except in an emergency arising out of self-defense. All photographs taken of the animal, the creature itself if captured alive or dead, must be surrendered to the Government of Nepal at the earliest time.

3 News and reports throwing light on the actual existence of the creature must be submitted to the Government of Nepal as soon as they are available and must not in any way be given out to the Press or Reporters for publicity without the permission of the Government of Nepal.

So if anyone ever finds a Yeti you now know what to do folks!

This reminds of the mummified finger smuggled out of Nepal 50 years ago and revered as a Yeti’s was revealed to be human a few years ago. The relic was taken from a monastery by a US explorer in the 1950s, who replaced it with a human finger to fool the monks. Then film star James Stewart helped to smuggle it out of India by hiding it in his wife’s lingerie case and it ended up in the Royal College of Surgeons museum in London. Scientists at Edinburgh Zoo said DNA sample analysis found it to be human. That’s a two finger salute then to the above regulations!