Last night, I was returning from a local fast food restaurant to foal watch at my farm. It was approx 11:30pm, though it might have been slightly later. I was traveling down a local farm road, one that I've been on thousands of times taking care of my horses over the last six or seven years at any time of day or night. Also, to note, I was not the driver. My mother, a native of Atlanta who has seen just about every wild animal this area has to offer, was in the driver's seat.
As I rounded the first bend of the next few bends, I saw a brown shadow go ahead in front of us. I simply figured it was my eyes playing tricks on me, as my glasses weren't on and it was incredibly fast. I quickly put them on before we rounded the next bend, and saw the same brown shadow, mentioning it to my mother. The next curve, we both saw it, and sped up to catch the creature that we both believed at the time was a deer. Upon getting closer, I believed it was a hog, as it wasn't diving to either side to a ditch (as a deer, domestic or wild dog, fox, etc would be prone to do), instead it ran directly down the center of the one-lane asphalt road until the end of the encounter. At this point, our speed was approaching 35mph, calling into question our conclusion that it must be a wild hog. It increased it's speed, and so did we, eventually coming to a steady pace of ~45mph.
The animal did not run like a dog, but appeared to have canid-like paws. It did not appear that this was because of an injury. It did not stretch out in a gallop-like movement, but seemed to quickly shuffle like a hog and we even considered that it might be a deformed goat for a moment. It had an unnatural red-brown color that I have never seen on an animal before. It's tail only appeared to be 6" long, but had a 3.5-4" wide tail base with about 2-2.5" of rump on either side of the tail. It's coat was not bushy, it resembled a very short haired but slightly wavy coated retriever. The coat was uniform for as much of the creature as I could see. I cannot give a weight estimate because I saw little more of it than it's hind end a brief flash of it's head.
Even with a speed of ~45mph, we never came closer than 15ft to this creature and it appeared that it could have gone much faster. I rolled down my window and called out to the animal, thinking that even an abused or dropped off dog might look back. The animal did not. The road eventually splits in two, our driveway coming to a dirt road that goes slightly to the right, and a concrete bridge with a gravel road that goes sharply to the left. Any animal's reaction would have been to continue almost straight ahead down our driveway, but this creature took a sharp left to the bridge and our neighbor's barn. The creature moved so fast that I only caught a moment of it's profile, and even then only the side of it's head. I'm relatively sure the creature had it's mouth open as I saw a brief flash of pink, but that was the only information I gained from the side view. I saw no teeth, but that does not mean there were none. I saw none of the shape of it's head. It did not, for any reason or for any length of time, turn to look at my vehicle.
There have been reports of a not-quite-dog creature with a red-brown coat and yellow eyes near my farm by an older resident, though it is possible this is not the same creature. I have seen bobcats, red and grey foxes, a recently released pair of red wolves, wild hogs, black bears, every type of coyote and coyote hybrid, and the constantly dropped off dogs that frequent my area. This was nothing my mother or I had ever seen. There was no time to bring up a cellphone camera, and the creature stayed in our headlights for about 1.5 minutes. |
|
