"There is another reason to suspect that Gideon was talking about size, for when he was asked something like 'How many?' he replied, 'Ten or twenty.' Now take the medium
of that general estimate: fifteen. Whatever the boy was talking about, it was in the neighborhood of fifteen of something." [See below]

"Now fast-forward to the 2004 interview that I had with Gideon. He was surprised when I asked him how many ropens there were. He looked at me like that should be obvious: "one." The look on his face suggested that either I was very ignorant or he misunderstood me.

"He later estimated the length of the tail at seven meters. That means that he thinks of length in terms of meters, which is not surprising in that part of the world. So looking at the drawing Gideon made in the dirt, the total length of the ropen could have been as much as fifteen meters, assuming there was a slight mistake in the drawing and/or in the tail-length estimate. But even if the total length was only twelve meters, that falls within the range of "ten to twenty." This fits quite well with the idea that Gideon was talking about size in the first interview.

"I don't want to beat a dead horse, but it seems very unlikely that Gideon would have changed the subject during those seven seconds. And I noticed nothing that would suggest that either interviewer changed the subject at that time. When we look at the whole interview, I believe it becomes obvious that the boy never changed the subject of the conversation but simply waited for each question. I doubt that he would have done so during those seven seconds."

Part of an email from Jonathan Whitcomb to Paul Nation (May 12, 2010) regarding two cryptozoological interviews on Umboi Island: about 1994 and late-2004. Both were of the native eyewitness Gideon Koro, and both were videotaped.

"Here is how the conversation went during this part of the interview" [first interview on Umboi, either 1993 or 1994]

"Blume [missionary] asked about the size of the creature. Gideon answered, 'House to house.' Blume then looked away at a nearby hut and the camera panned to that house. While the camera was pointed away from the people, something was said, but I cannot tell what it was, for the camera did not pick it up well at that point. Blume then said, 'There were some big ones and some small ones. . . .'

"It seems to me that we could assume that the subject changed, while the camera was on the house. But I believe that Gideon did not intend to change the subject and that
he said something about 'big ones and small ones' in context with the present subject, which was about the size. In other words, houses are of various sizes.

"There were only seven seconds between the end of the phrase 'so it was about twenty feet' to the beginning of the phrase 'There were some big ones . . .' which is enough time to change the subject; but I don't think that happened.

". . .When people looked away at a nearby house, what was Gideon thinking when he said something like 'big ones and small ones?' Remember that even the camera was pointed
towards the house during these seven seconds. I believe that Jim Blume misunderstood what Gideon was talking about at that moment. It really was still about size.