In 2004, a radio transmitter outside Albuquerque, N.M., picked up a transmission that at first listen sounded like a man yelling. It has since been determined that the “man” is actually “Yosemite Sam” from the 1949 Bugs Bunny cartoon Bunker Hill Bunny. You can watch a video about this strange transmission here.

 

DXers, people who engage in the hobby of receiving and/or identifying distant TV and radio signals, have given the transmission the name “Yosemite Sam.” It was originally broadcast across four shortwave frequencies for a total of two minutes. Each individual transmission starts with a data burst that’s 0.8 seconds long followed by the cartoon character’s voice saying, “Varmint, I’m-a gonna b-b-b-bloooow yah t’smithereenies!”

 

The transmission disappeared for a short time in December 2004, then it reappeared in February 2005. It returned on its original frequencies as well as on several new ones.

 

Why does the Yosemite Sam transmission exist? Is it a hoax? If so, why? If it’s not a hoax, how has just that small sound byte been picked up by a radio transmitter? Is it possible that aliens of some kind were “watching” Bugs Bunny back in 2004 and we somehow picked up a signal within their spacecraft?

 

Of course, we could speculate forever about what this and a multitude of other “encounters with the unknown means. I’m certainly not the type to get all up in arms when I read a report that an Iowa cow was stolen by Martians or that E.T. was spotted on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City. But the huge number of reported extraterrestrial activities does make one wonder what’s really going on out there beyond our physical world.

 

If anybody has opinions on this, we’d love to hear them.