[Culton sounds]
My name is Colton.
Folks just call me Colt, which I guess is fitting as I've spent most of my life around horses.
But you know, I'm not the only one that knows horses.
I'm pretty sure Bigfoot knows them pretty well too.
Maybe too well.
I'm writing this email to tell you about the time at Bigfoot was eyeing my horses one night,
and I didn't like it one bit, no sir.
I know horses and their behaviors well.
They will spook its snakes curled up on a warm road on a summer's evening.
They blow inside step at the gator slides off the bank.
They dance sideways when a hog goes running through the brush like a freight train.
But what they don't do is stop dead.
Lock up as if someone drove a post right through their hooves, and they refuse to move the
way my mare did that evening.
Unless there's something close enough and wrong enough that every instinct in my mare's
body starts screaming, "Predator."
And when I finally got wind of what she did, I understood why.
It was early spring, March, one of those Louisiana Mississippi line kind of evenings where
the air is just plain wet feeling.
Now March down here is sometimes already very warm, humid, and sticky.
The bugs are already out, and even if you don't see them, you're hearing them everywhere.
Now the trail I'm going to be talking about is one that I've ridden more times than I
can count.
It goes along the back of my property and about eight or nine more, running between two
and a half to three miles if you put it all together, and it runs through some deep swamp
areas.
If you're out there, and if you stay still, you can still hear the highway in the distance,
or you might hear someone's mom at their back door yelling for the kids to come in for dinner.
No one would go out there and think that they're in a remote place.
But the swamp back there doesn't care what people think.
It behaves like it's the most remote place on the continent.
Now once you're there under those bottom land hardwoods, oaks and gums and cypress knees
in the low spots, the whole world changes.
The light everywhere goes more green.
The air feels heavy, and sound it will do funny things to you back there.
A frog can sound like it's right behind your ear when it's really more than fifty yards
away.
A stick snapping can be a squirrel or a man or nothing at all, and it might be right by you,
and it might not.
It can be hard to tell.
And the understory there, the palmetto and the briar and the black water and pockets.
You can be ten feet from something, and you can't see it if it doesn't want to be seen.
Now I had meant to be in and out that evening, just a quick ride.
A neighbor was in Hawaii for his daughter's wedding, and while he was gone, I was taking care
of his place and his two goats.
I was going that night to do a routine check on a fence line and drop some feed.
I was going to make sure nothing was torn up, and I'd planned to be back well before dark.
But I got off work late, then got home, did a few things, lost track of time, and I told
myself that's okay.
I knew that trail well enough to cut it close, but I'd be home before dark.
But I was just lazy.
That's what it really was.
I was complacent and overconfident.
You know, that overconfidence?
That's the death of many a good man, I suspect.
I had my mare under me, and a pack horse and tow behind.
A good, steady animal, but he always sped off my mare's mood.
I was carrying feed for the goats, because where the feed was normally stored wasn't somewhere
that I would have access to.
I was also carrying some tools and a small roll of fence wire and some staples and a puller,
just in case.
He had been having trouble with something tearing up the fences all around there, seemed every
couple of days something was torn up, he said.
And just like the feed, where all those tools and things would be on his property, I wouldn't
have access to.
I knew that going into it, and we discussed it, and I was okay with it.
He's a really good neighbor.
But other than that, all I had was a flashlight I tossed at the last minute in a saddlebag.
No need though, right?
I was going to be home before dark, I thought.
I had no rifle, no long gun with me, and that day I didn't even have my sidearm, mostly
because again it was supposed to be just a quick check and to drop some feed.
I didn't want to carry the weight, I didn't want the hassle, and besides, I had never ran
into anything out there that would need a gun anyway.
Otherwise all I had was a small, dicks blade on my belt out of habit, and that was it.
We rode in around 640 that evening.
The sun was already low enough that the shadows had teeth to them, and they were gobbling
up everything around.
The swamp, it was alive with noise, frogs calling, insects buzzing, and something splashing
in a slough somewhere.
The air sat on my skin like a heavy warm rag.
There was low wind from time to time.
You could smell the wet leaves in the mud, and that sweet sour rot that never leaves a place
like that.
The horses were fine at first.
Ears working, heads bopping, going at a good steady pace.
My mare stepped ever fallen limbs and walked through shallow puddles without a fuss.
We made good time until the trail tightened up ahead.
There's a section where the path pinches between a thick stand-up palm meadow and a line
of older oaks.
Tall trunks and roots like knuckles pushing up through the soil.
It's not wide, not like a road.
More like a single-file lane carved through green.
Just a choke point.
Now you don't go around it unless you get off and fight brush and briar and maybe sink
a boot in the black water that you can't see.
She came up on it and my mare stopped.
I don't mean she hesitated.
This wasn't a cautious step-and-look.
This was a full-body stop like someone hit the pause button on her.
Her ears went forward, stiff as boards, then flattened back against her head so hard the
tips trembled.
Her nostrils flared.
She sucked air in sharp, then blew out low.
One of those warning blows that horses do when they catch something they don't like.
Behind her, the pack-horse started shifting his feet.
The lead rope went taught, then slack, then taught again as he tried to decide whether to
come up beside us or try to get away.
I clicked my tongue.
"Come on, girl."
But nothing.
I gave her a light nudge with my heel.
She would not take a single step.
So I nudged again a little more firmly.
She backed up.
That's the moment my stomach dropped.
My mare is not timid.
She'll push through brush, step over logs, wade into water up to her knees if I nudge her.
She does not back off of a trail unless there's something really bad in the air.
So my first thought, because it's the sensible thought, was there might be a snake.
No cotton mowls, they like to lay on a warm path.
So I swung down off of her, keeping a hand on the reins, and I scanned the ground.
There was no snake, no movement in the dirt, no slithering of scales.
But the smell hit me the second my boot sank into the ding-up trail.
Thick, sour, like wet dog, mixed with swamp mud, and something rotten that had been sitting
far too long in the heat.
It was strong enough it made my eyes water, and my throat tighten.
This wasn't some whiff.
This was an occupying force on my nasal passages and my lungs.
It was like all the air had been replaced with whatever this stink was.
I put my palm on my mare's neck, feeling for some explanation, feeling for a trimmer maybe
or a thorn stuck under her tack.
Her muscles were quivering under her hide.
Not from exertion, from fear.
The pack-horse snorted behind us, a quick, nervous sound.
Then he blew hard through his nose like he was trying to clear the stink out of his head,
too.
I let it my face, trying to place that scent.
Bear?
No, I'd smelled bears before.
They're musky, oily, animal smelling.
This was so much worse.
This was like an animal that had lived in wet rot and rolled around in it for fun.
Then the woods to my right suddenly went quiet.
I don't mean the no sound kind of quiet.
The swamp always makes some kind of noise.
There's always something calling, buzzing or dripping.
But this was different.
It was like the sound was a fire and someone threw a wet blanket over it.
It was muffled for just a second, dwindled, and then died out in the next second.
There were still frogs out in the distance calling, but right there, right where I was,
right beside the trail?
There was a sudden focus stillness, the kind that makes the hair rise up on your arms.
The Paul Meto-Fran's rustled once.
I looked, thinking, wild hog, thinking, dear, thinking, maybe a black bear coming up too
close.
And then I saw something tall beside the Paul Meto's.
At first my brain tried to see it as a man, maybe a hunter, maybe someone out there lost,
maybe he's somebody who had stepped off the trail to let me pass and didn't want to spook
the horses.
Except it wasn't shaped quite like a man.
It shifted forward just enough that the light filtering through the fronds caught a shoulder
line, too high, too broad.
It was upright, dark and bulky, like a big barrel wrapped in hair.
The mass of it filled the space in a way that just didn't make sense with the thin cover
that it was trying to use.
It shouldn't have been able to hide there so completely, but yet it did.
Maybe because it didn't need to hide its whole body.
It only needed to stay just inside the brush line where the green broke up its outline.
It didn't step out onto the trail.
It stayed there in the Paul Meto's, using the fronds like a curtain.
And then I saw a hand slide up onto a tree trunk, the way a person braces themselves when
leaning out to look around something.
Only it wasn't a person's hand.
It was too big, too wide.
The fingers looked like thick sticks, and when it gripped the bark, the palm and fingers all
spread out, showing just how big it really was.
It leaned slightly, like it was trying to see around my mare.
And then I got this cold, clear realization that punched down through everything in my head.
It was not looking at me.
It was looking around me.
It was looking at my animals.
Now predators look at the vulnerable animals first, sizing up which looked like the quickest
runners, the ones that might fight, and the ones who might be too weak or old to do either.
My mare snorted, sharp, high, and tried to swing her hind quarters away from the chokepoint.
The pack-horse jerked the lead rope tight, eyes rolling wide at the edges.
Like arched, like he was ready to bolt through me if he had to.
I kept my voice calm.
Easy, easy girl.
Stay easy.
But my voice sounded then to my own ears.
I didn't want to move forward.
I didn't want to get any closer.
I also didn't want to stand there frozen long enough for whatever that was to decide standing
still meant.
I wasn't any kind of threat, and my animals would be easy pickings.
No sir.
I reached into the saddlebag with one hand, keeping the reins tight in the other, and pulled
out my flashlight.
You know, the stupidest part of fear is that it makes you argue with yourself while something
is happening.
There was a part of my brain that kept saying, "Don't shine that light on it.
Don't provoke it."
Then the other part was saying, "Oh no, you need to see what it is."
It is.
You need to know if it's alone.
You need to know what it's doing.
So I clicked the light on low, and angled it toward the brush, keeping it down at first,
not shining it straight into its face.
The light beams slid over the palmettos and the wet leaves, and it caught the glint of
hair.
Black brown, coarse-looking, matted in spots as if it had just been in water.
The hair wasn't like a bear's fur.
This looked longer, stringier, hanging in clumps.
The head turned toward the light, and through a gap in the fronds, I caught a glimpse of
the face.
Dick heavy brown, wide, flat nose, and skin darker than the hair, looking like wet leather.
The eyes caught the light with a dull shine.
Not like deer eye or gator eye, something else.
My mare tried to bolt backward.
Not a shy step.
She was trying to leave.
I grabbed the reins hard enough that the leather bit into my hand, and she hit the end of them
and through her head, snorting and trembling.
The thing in the brush made a low sound.
Not a growl, but more like a rumble, some kind of a vibration in a very large chest.
It was a warning, I think, and one that didn't need volume to be understood.
And then it moved.
It wasn't charging, but it stepped parallel.
It kept to the brush, moving with us as I backed my mare out of that choke point.
And that's when the real tear or hit, sharp and clean.
Because this wasn't some animal being spooked by the horses, it wasn't slipping away into
the cover as most animals do when they encounter my horses.
This thing was not retreating.
No, sir.
It was tracking us.
Like it knew the trail.
Like it knew this choke point forced us to commit, going one way or the other.
Like it understood where we had to be to get somewhere else.
So I started backing up, leading my mare now because she was too keyed up to stand still.
I didn't want her to spin.
If she spun, the packhorse would get tangled up.
And if we went down in that narrow trail right there?
Well, we'd be on the ground in a tight lane with palm meadows on one side and oaks on the
other.
And something big enough to reach us from three or four feet away.
I kept the rain short.
I kept my body between her head and the brush line.
I kept backing up, boots sliding on damp leaves, feeling every second stretch out longer than
it really should.
The brush to my right kept moving right along with us.
Always the same distance.
Always just inside the greenery.
But close enough yet that it could reach for us in a second if it took just one step toward
us.
I couldn't see it fully anymore.
But I knew it was there because the Palmetto-Fran's dipped in rows as something passed behind
them.
I heard the soft, weighted sound of a foot sinking into wet leaves.
Not the quick patter of deer, not the light crunch of a raccoon, but heavy and deliberate.
Every now and then I would look over and I would see that dark shape moving above the
fronds.
I tried not to look at it.
Once there was a sharp pop of wood as if a branch had snapped under heavy pressure.
My mare flinched so hard I felt it in the rains.
The pack horse let out a low, trembling kind of wicker.
It's the sound that horses make when they're calling, but they're afraid to call too loud.
With every step my mind kept trying to rationalize.
Bear.
Man.
Hog.
I was trying to rationalize anything but what it looked like.
But everything about it was wrong for any of the answers my mind came up with.
It was too upright, walking too smoothly.
It was using cover and being deliberate.
It matched our pace without noise except when it wanted to.
And the smell of it, oh my god, the smell.
It rolled out to us in waves, stronger when it moved.
Thick enough I could taste it.
And I had no gun.
No clean way to protect two animals and myself on such a narrow trail.
All I had was my voice and a flashlight and a small knife.
So I did the only thing that I knew might maybe help.
I made myself look big.
I mean, that's what animals do when they're threatened right?
Well, that's what I did, or tried to do.
I raised my arms wide, keeping the light pointed down, not flashing it in its face.
And I shouted, deep and loud, like the way you would holler at a bull that's looking at
you way too hard.
"Hey," I shouted.
The brush stopped moving.
Being held still in quiet for a heartbeat.
My mayor's ears flicked forward, then back, and forward again, trembling the whole time
as tissue paper in the wind would.
Now for three seconds, maybe less, maybe more.
There was nothing but my own breathing and the distant drone of bugs and frogs.
When I heard one heavy exhale from the brush, like a big lung emptying out slowly, and the
palmettos began to move again.
But slower now.
Yet, they still paralleled us.
That slower pace was somehow worse in a way.
It was deliberate.
That meant it was thinking and reasoning and planning.
I knew, then, it wasn't hurried at all because it knew it didn't have to.
I backed up until the trail widened into a section where two horses could pass without
brushing both sides.
I could see a turning spot ahead where the path bent and opened enough to pivot without
tangling the pack-horse.
My calves burned.
My hand ached from clamping so hard on the reins.
Squat, slipped my shirt down to my back, even though the air was beginning to cool.
I didn't take my eyes off the right side of the brush any longer than a blink.
Every time I looked away, I imagined it was going to step out and close the distance between
us.
When I hit the wider spot, I turned my mare in one careful, smooth motion, talking to her
the whole time.
Easy, easy girl.
That's it.
The pack-horse swung with us, his hooves scraping, the rope pulling, and his whole body tight
like a drawn bow.
I got back in my mare saddle quickly, and we left.
Not at a gallop.
No, no, you don't gallop on swamp trails at dusk unless you want a broken neck.
But it was an urgent fast walk that flirted to being a trot, the kind that says, "Okay,
we're leaving now, and nothing is going to stop us."
My mare kept flicking her ears back as if she was listening for footsteps behind us.
The pack-horse blew hard, and he kept crowding up close to us like he wanted to come right
beside us, like he understood that he was the last one in line, and he knew that made
him vulnerable.
I didn't look back until we'd cleared the worst of the understory there.
In the trees finally thinned out enough that the air didn't feel like it was pressing
in on my face, I got us out onto the open-toe track.
The sky was purple by then, and the last light was stretched thin and fading fast.
The horse's settled just a fraction.
They weren't quite calm, but they weren't in their earlier panic, either.
My mare's neck was still arched.
Her nostrils still blowing wide.
Her skin still twitching as if she expected something to grab her from the side.
And then there was a smell.
That smell hung with us.
So I knew the swamp monster, meaning our version of a bigfoot, was out there hanging with
us, too.
It was on and off for another half-mile.
It would come back like it was pacing us just downwind.
It wasn't constant.
It was like it would drift away, then roll in again in a hard way as soon as the breeze shifted.
But I did not see it again.
Once we got on the two-track, all I had to tell me that it was still around was the smell
in a persistent feeling of being watched.
I heard no screaming, no running footsteps or noise of any other kind that didn't belong
out there in the evenings in a swamp.
It wasn't the sighting itself that bothered me the most, though.
I replayed that face many times through the Paul Meadow more times than I want to admit,
but even that isn't what bothered me the most.
It was the behavior.
The way it used the brush line, and it was doing it right at the choke point.
The way it stayed parallel, and the way it ignored me, and looked at my animals.
I remember the look on its face, and it still chills me when I think about it now.
It completely disregarded me.
It was looking at my animals.
It wanted my horses.
I would lay my life on the bedding table on that one.
But my mare, my wonderful, tough, stubborn mare, who will walk into things most other horses
would refuse?
Well, she was convinced from the get-go we were in danger, and I know to always trust her.
I trust her way more than I trust my own instincts or any kind of manly pride.
If my mare says there's trouble out there, yes, sir, I believe her, and I act accordingly.
And so should you.
Signed, cult.
Keep in listening to the Buckeye Bigfoot podcast.