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[Crying]

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Now, I'll tell this to you straight.

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I'm not a man prone to flights of fancy.

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I work for what I have.

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I keep to my land and my family, and I'm not in the business of making up big stories

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to keep kids entertained.

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Folks around here?

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Yeah, they will tell some tall tales, sure.

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But there's a difference between a story and the real thing that is straight up the stuff

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of nightmares.

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What am I about to tell you?

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Happened right here on my own property on a very clear night with no moon, and it's

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left me with more questions than I will ever be able to answer.

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I live on ten acres of mixed pasture and pine on the Tennessee side of the Cumberland

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Plateau.

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It's not a fancy place.

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There's a double wide set back from the county road, a long gravel drive that floods

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out every march, and a good barn that was built before either World War ever happened,

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and it still stands strong, if a bit ragged.

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But my pride and joy, now side of my wife and my kids, are my three hounds.

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Two are black and tans, and there's one blue tick, and all were bred for tracking and

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treing coons.

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They aren't city-lap dogs that live in houses.

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But I love them and protect them like they were my kids.

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But make no mistake, they're far too wild to be indoor dogs.

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City people, you won't understand.

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But country folk, you know what I mean.

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If you know, you know.

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Those dogs sleep outside in a run that I built myself.

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Six-foot-high chain link, dug down into the ground so nothing can burrow under.

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And there's a tin roof across half of it for shelter.

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I keep their straw fresh.

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I keep their balls full of clean water, and in the winter I wrap tarps up around it,

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and they have heated mats and warming lamps.

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And I've never had a night when they weren't raising holy hell at something crossing the

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edge of my yard.

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A possum waddling through.

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Ugh, they're louder than Gabriel blowing his horn.

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A bear coming too close and sniffing around?

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They are out there trying to tear down that fence to get at that bear.

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So that's why this one night in question sticks out so much.

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Because they didn't bark.

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Not once.

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It was mid-October, a Saturday night, and I remember because we just had the first fire of the

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season in the wood stove.

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The kids were in bed, and my wife had gone to sleep early.

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And I was up nursing several cups of coffee, rereading a favorite Louis Le Mans novel,

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and that's my guilty pleasure when the houses are quiet.

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Somewhere around eleven, I stepped out onto the porch for a cigarette.

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The air was cool and sharp, but heavy with the smell of wood smoke.

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The yard light out there hummed up on the pole, casting a yellow glow across the gravel

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drive and the dog run.

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At first I didn't notice it.

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There was the sound of me walking out, the sound of the screen door closing behind me,

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in my boots on the porch wood, and the crinkle of me fishing out of cigarette from the

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pack, in the grinding of the lighter wheel as I lit it.

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I took a deep drag and exhaled.

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That's when I heard it.

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More to the point that I didn't hear it.

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There was nothing to hear out there.

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It was like I stepped into a vacuum.

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Usually when that back door opens, my dogs would come to the fence, they're thinking it's

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treat time or time to run, or they just come out to say hello.

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I'd go and see them at the fence, and they'll whine for attention, and almost always I will

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walk out there, check on them, and give them some attention as I smoke a cigarette or

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two.

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It's just a nightly thing we do, right?

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But not that night.

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The dogs were not at the fence.

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They weren't pacing back and forth, whining and yipping, anxious for me to step down off the

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porch to come see them.

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I blinked a couple times to my eyes, adjusted to the light out there.

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All there was was that yellow pole light, and by the time it made it to the dog run, that

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life was less than half-strength.

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But it was enough I could still see.

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I had never needed more light out there before.

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I knew if there was a problem big enough that I shouldn't walk out there unarmed, my

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hands would tell me before I ever stepped off the porch.

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So I was confused.

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I looked at the front of the run.

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They were not there.

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In a second though I started to pick them out in the darkness.

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All three were plastered to the very back corner of the run, pressed tight up against the

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chain link as if they were trying to climb out.

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Their ears were flat, their tails tucked under them.

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I thought maybe a bear had wandered in way too close, but bears do not make my hands go

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silent.

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If anything, the scent of a bear makes them fighting mad.

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I called out to them.

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"What's the matter with you all?"

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They didn't move.

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They didn't make a sound.

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Boom-hower, my youngest, let out a low, whimpering sound that I'd never heard from him before.

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And yes, before you ask, I am a king of the hill fan.

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And my other two dogs are named Hank and Dale.

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Anyway, that's when I heard the noise.

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I heard a soft, clean, clean, of metal, followed by the rattling of the dog-run gate handle.

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At first my brain said, "Rakun."

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We've had them fiddle with the latch before, though they can't usually work it out and

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get it open.

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No idea why they bother with it.

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There's nothing for them in there but death if they happen to get inside.

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I think they do it just to tease the dogs.

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But what I was hearing was different.

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This had a sound that didn't make me think like little paws.

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I froze, listening hard.

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The handle jiciled again.

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Clink, clink.

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Then a pull, slow but strong, making the chain links grown and shudder.

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I squinted into the arid lights glow, looked to the far side of the pin, and that's when

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I saw it.

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There was a shape there in the darkness, barely visible, but it was crouched low on the

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outside of the dog-run.

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At first I thought there was some man out there, maybe some dumb fool from town trying to

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steal my hounds.

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But then it shifted, and I caught the outline of the shoulders.

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A broad sloping covered in something that moved like fur under the light.

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The head was way too big, the arms far too long.

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Then one of those arms stretched up, and I watched, transfixed, as a massive hand wrapped

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around the latch, testing it again.

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It was trying to figure out how to work that latch.

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Why it was doing that when it could have just peeled back the chain-linked fence like

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the top of a can of spam?

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I don't know.

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Maybe it didn't know it could.

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I have since thought that maybe it might have seen me come and go that way long before

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that night, and it knew somehow that was an entrance and an exit.

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But that hand, it was lit up in the weak yellow light when it reached for the latch.

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I will never forget what I saw.

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Big fat fingers like thick-brought worst.

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I saw dullness in the light when it reached.

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I guess they were the fingernails.

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They looked short, blunt, and dull at the end of the big fat sausage fingers.

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And for the record, I can't eat sausage links to this day.

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Never mind a brot.

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It pooled on the latch again, rattling it with more force.

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I felt its frustration build.

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And the dogs began to whimper louder, pressing themselves tightly up against the back of the

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pin.

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Their sound was now a low, pitiful wine.

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They were telling me they were scared out of their wits.

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If I'd thought that it was just some guy from town, I'd have been out there with my son's

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baseball bat that he'd left on the porch earlier, or I'd go in and grab the shotgun from

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inside, and I'd make him get off my land.

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You see, but I wasn't sure.

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And usually I'm a man who's sure about everything, but not that night.

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I saw the figure lean in closer, and the light caught its face as it leaned forward just

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enough for me to see the eyes.

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And that's all I remember seeing are the eyes.

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They were forward facing, and deep set.

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As they leaned forward out of shadow into light, they reflected the light in a way that

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humans don't, unless you manage to get them with a camera flash just right.

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And human eyes with a camera flash, as you all know, will give you red eye.

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They shine red.

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But what I saw was a yellow-green color that I'd never seen before, and I know my animal

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eye-shines at night.

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I know a raccoon's as yellow.

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White-tailed deer, greenish-white.

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White eye-shine belongs to porcupines, owls and cats.

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Possums are a strange orange.

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Squirrels are a little bit of red and a little bit of orange.

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You see, I know them all well.

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I like to hunt at night.

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But a yellow-green eye-shine?

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I had never seen that before.

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It studied the latch just a moment longer.

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Then it let out a low, chest deep-sound.

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If I hadn't been outside, I probably wouldn't have heard it.

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This wasn't a growl exactly.

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It was more like a frustrated grunt.

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Then as if realizing it wasn't going to get the door open, it slowly stood to its full

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height.

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And Lord helped me.

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It was tall.

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Then I was sure this could not be a man.

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And it was a shock of a moment when I realized that.

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But I knew.

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The top of that dog-run fence came to just below its collarbone.

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As I said, that was six feet tall.

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It had to be at least seven and a half feet, maybe more.

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Its shoulders stretched wider than the door gate itself.

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It turned its head.

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And even from the porch, I felt its eyes hit mine.

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I hadn't moved a muscle.

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I hadn't made a sound.

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Maybe it smelled the tobacco.

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But once I had seen it, I had frozen, and now it's looking right at me in the darkness.

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We locked eyes there in the half-dark, for what was probably a couple heartbeats.

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Then without a sound, it stepped back into the shadows just beyond the yellow yard light.

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One step, two steps.

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Then it vanished into the darkness.

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My dog stayed frozen in the corner, trembling.

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I don't remember going back inside to get it.

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But when the sun came up, I was still sitting on the porch with my rifle on my lap.

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I have a memory of going out there, checking my dogs very well, walking around with my rifle.

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I remember checking the fence in the run carefully.

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You don't mess with my dogs.

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I don't care who or what you are.

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The dogs were their normal selves, hanging at the front of the run, hoping for my attention,

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but then an hour.

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But I still didn't trust that.

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I know dogs don't lie, but I didn't trust that thing was really gone.

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When the sun came up and I checked the run that morning, the dirt down by the gate was pressed

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deeply with prints.

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Not paw prints.

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And I had been careful when I was out there checking it during the night.

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I made sure not to step in that area.

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I already knew what I was dealing with.

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When I had a feeling I would be finding prints come morning.

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And there they were.

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Foot prints, several of them, wide, human-shaped feet, pressed deep into the damp ground.

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I scuffed the prints over with my boot, then put some filled dirt and gravel over there.

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I didn't want my kids or wife to see.

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Over the next few days I put out several more lights by their run and all over the yard.

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I enclosed more of their run permanently.

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I made sure they would have a place to retreat to that they couldn't be seen if they didn't

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want to.

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Somewhere they would feel safer.

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But my dogs, well, they've never been quite the same.

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They are more quiet at night.

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Oh, they will still bark if something comes into the yard, and they still bark like the

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Dickens when we're hunting.

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But it just isn't the same.

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It's hard to nail down, but their behavior is different.

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They always stuck close together before.

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But now they are velcroed to each other.

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I don't know what it wanted with them.

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Maybe it was curious.

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Maybe it thought it could open the run and take one of my dogs.

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Maybe it was testing me.

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Maybe all it wanted was to know that it could figure out a human's latch.

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But I haven't seen that thing since.

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That doesn't mean that it's not out there right at the edges of my yard, right where the

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lights can't reach it.

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All I know is from that night on, I never trusted the dark edges of my yard again.

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I put out more motion lights, and I promise you, if I see one go off, I'm out there,

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lickety split.

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Because this is my land, this is my yard, it's my castle.

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I will defend it.

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[At the end of the video, we're done]