A fourth right foot has now been discovered washed ashore near Vancouver.  In common with the three other misplaced appendages – all discovered on British Columbian beaches since August 2007 – it was still wearing a   sock and trainer.  According to ABC News, one man believes the feet may be remains   of his two brothers and two other passengers who were in a plane that crashed in waters  off Quadra Island three years ago.  ABC reported Kevin Decock as saying that he may have stirred up ocean floor remains during a search last summer: “I was out on the water conducting some surveys trying to bring up the engine from the plane crash, and I was dragging a hook.  And two weeks after that the first foot showed up.”

The theory has legs, so to speak.  Information released by police confirms that all of the feet most likely became detached from their decomposing owners’ legs as a result of (relatively) natural processes – there is absolutely no forensic evidence to support a more colourful scenario involving punitive severance.  It is entirely possible that the plane’s passengers’ right feet, buoyed by plastic trainers, floated towards Vancouver of their own accord, albeit after Mr Decock stirred the water.  And what of the four left feet?  The selective migration of right feet towards Vancouver lends possible support to Prof. Curtis Ebbesmeyer’s theory that left and right footwear – and on occasion the feet in them – float in entirely different directions.  But if that is indeed the case, then where are the left feet headed?