The cast of Finding Bigfoot stops at Crabby Al’s to hold a meeting. They eat shrimp with townies and talk sightings.

Each episode features them at some remote location—typically Wyoming or South Dakota—chatting up locals and exploring the forest. They make loud, whooping noises and hit sticks against trees, but they never find a Bigfoot—at least, they never show one.

Today they’re visiting inland Connecticut. Thomaston.

“A real New England seafood restaurant,” they say. “Right on the coast.”

The camera angles are careful, strategic. They capture oysters with too much chopped parsley, chowder in bowls like cupped palms. There are sailboat models tacked to the walls and pencil drawings of sand dollars.

People are laughing. They lean over the paper tablecloth, describing Bigfoot in full detail. Maybe a bear. A coyote. Kids playing a prank.

They describe smells and stature, the glistening oil coating the Bigfoot’s fur. The red eyes.

This is what the TV audience won’t see: bald men on Harleys who cling to the sidewalk like mosquitos on skin. That waitress who loogies on burgers in the kitchen.

The drizzle of water that runs beneath Reynold’s Bridge, choked by empty tuna cans and plastic bags, Diet Coke bottles. The swollen dumpsters next door.

Bigfoot, crawling out from the alleyway, sucking discarded shrimp tails the way Creepy Joe sucks cigarette butts.

Kathryn Fitzpatrick is currently pursuing an MFA at the University of Alabama. Her work has been featured in Cleaver Magazine, Out Magazine, Bodega, and elsewhere, and was called “biting, brutally honest, and not school appropriate” by her high school principal. She tweets at @avgbuttcrumb.