The feet disarticulated naturally? Oh, man, yuckers.

For some reason (and I understand this is totally backwards) that's way grosser to me than if the feet had just been chopped off.

I've sort of been following this story, and there was a part you didn't mention: one of the feet was an animal paw stuffed into a shoe. Ho ho! The local authorities, as I understand it, didn't find that quite as funny as I did. But, hey, it's severed foot fever in the Pacific Northwest! Everybody wants in! You can't blame someone for tossing one of their spare paws into the mix, just to be a part the new fad.

At first I thought the whole idea of the feet disarticulating naturally was a bit iffy, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Feet and hands are pretty tight packages, anatomically speaking, because of the sheer amount of bone, ligaments, and tendons in those areas. So it makes sense that they're tough enough to survive articulated like that (especially with shoes, which offer some protection from the elements). Also, were it a serial killer chopping off feet as a strange quirk, he/she wouldn't be likely to just cut it off and dump it somewhere. Firstly, dismemberment is harder than it looks. There's a lot of STUFF you have to get through (like the aforementioned ligaments, tendons and bones) before the limb parts from the body. Secondly, were it dismemberment, it wouldn't make sense for it to be at the foot. When dismemberment occurs, it typically occurs somewhere around the knee or thigh area, so that you have less pieces to worry about, so to speak (that is, limbs, torso, head). Thirdly, when serial killers take trophies (like limbs) they tend to keep them. So if this were the case, investigators wouldn't be finding feet. Rather, they'd be finding bodies without them.

...I cannot BELIEVE I just put all that to writing.

Well I guess that means all these people must have naturally KICKED THE BUCKET!!! Ha!