Judith Tells her Story
My name is Judith, and I want to tell you about the time I had a pregnant stray dog on my land, and about the night Bigfoot tried to take her.
She was skinny – too skinny for any dog, and frighteningly so for a pregnant dog. Cooler autumn temperatures had come early, making the September morning feel more like October and I could see her shiver as she stood between my back porch and the shed near the treeline. She seemed uncertain. I had seen her the previous few days from a distance in the woods out back, but she never came close. I guess it was the smell of my breakfast bacon that made her desperate enough to come closer.
I went inside, got the three pieces of leftover bacon and walked out onto the back porch. She darted away as soon as I stepped out. I tossed the bacon out in the yard as far as they would go, which wasn’t very far, and then went inside.
I watched from the kitchen window as she searched for and ate all three pieces before returning to somewhere in the trees.
Living out in the rural areas of Ohio, it isn’t uncommon to come across a stray dog pregnant or otherwise. My recent visitor looked to be a mix of hound dog and maybe a German Shepherd – I wasn’t sure. She had the tan and black markings of a shepherd, but the fur was very close and short to her body, and she had floppy ears – not at all like a shepherd. Her legs were also shorter than a shepherd’s, and from snout to rear, she had a shorter body length. In total, she was mash up of a mutt – and as well know, those are oftentimes the best dogs.
Over the next week I coaxed her closer and closer to the house, setting one of those aluminum pie pans closer to the house with each meal. By the end of the week, she finally settled into the large box I had turned over on its side, lined with old blankets and set against the house in the corner where the porch railing met the house. I did try to coax her inside as it was still quite chilly, especially at night, but she refused. I think it was only her desperate situation that forced her to give me some semblance of trust.
Over the days I came to learn that “Mama”, as I had begun to call her, had a very timid, nervous nature, and was easily frightened and spooked with sounds and sudden movement. She also rarely made a sound, which made me wonder about her past. I don’t know what happened in her life before she found her way into my yard, but I didn’t think it had been very pleasant.
It was late one evening, and I was catching up on some reading when I suddenly heard Mama let out a long, moaning whine that turned into frantic barks. As I said, she had not made a sound the entire time she had been at the house, so I was a little concerned. I thought perhaps a bear or something else might have wandered into the yard. We weren’t too far from a wildlife preserve area, and the forest behind my house did connect to other stretches of wooded areas that linked to the preserve, and while there weren’t supposed to be any bears in our area, I knew for a fact there were, as I had seen a couple over the years.
With this in mind, I headed to the back door and got the handheld spotlight off the shelf in the laundry room, turned on the spotlight and flipped the back porch light on and stepped out to see what was causing the commotion, and almost hit Mama with the screen door when I opened it as she had backed up across the porch.
I shined my light over to the left towards her box in the corner – the direction in which she was barking, only to immediately be met with an angry roar that I felt reverberate in my chest. I knew immediately that what I was looking at was a Sasquatch – a Bigfoot.
It stood on the other side of the porch railing, a long arm reaching out across the porch, as if it were trying to get to Mama. Now, the porch stood about Three and a half feet off the ground, since the land had a slope from the front of the house to the back.
The spotlight was on it for less than a second before it pulled its arm back, then let out a roar that I felt reverberate in my chest while simultaneously banging on the wooden porch railing, breaking it to pieces.
I was terrified. Mama had backed up even further on the porch, leaning into the side of my leg. We were roughly 8 feet from that end of the porch where the beast stood, and I feared it would either climb up on the porch with us, or walk around to where the steps where when it whirled around and went running back toward the treeline beyond the shed out back. I watched it run and fade into the darkness, frozen where I stood.
Now, I might have only had the light on it for a fraction of a second, but I know what I saw, I saw the leathery face and the brownish fur that seemed to have red highlights in it – and that may have been from the intensity of the spotlight, I don’t know. And It had fingers of a sort, and what would have been a thumb on a human seemed to be just an oddly set extra finger. I know because they were only a few feet away from me as it reached out, but in my mind, they were within fingertip distance.
It was that arm reaching out over the porch that scared me the most. Later, I thought about that arm reaching across the porch and realized it was at a minimum of 7 and a half feet tall, judging from how much was visible of its body above the porch and railing.
I was scared beyond words, but not so scared that I didn’t know I needed to get in the house – and there was no way I was leaving Mama out there to face that thing in the night. Whether she wanted to come inside or not, I was taking her inside. I opened the screen door, planning to reach down and scoop up Mama and her pregnant belly when Mama darted into the house with no encouragement. I closed the back door behind me and locked it, vaguely aware that my little deadbolt would offer no protection if that thing should decide it wanted in.
I was still shaking as I walked around the ground floor making sure everything was closed and locked, and that every curtain and blind was closed. Mama was still in the laundry room, I realized, and I walked in to find her between the washing machine and the wall, with her nose in the corner, just standing there, still shaking. I wasn’t sure how she forced herself in there, as the gap from the machine to the wall was far less than the width of her pregnant belly was wide, but she refused to come out. I didn’t blame her.
I pulled down some of the towels that I had folded earlier and made her a nest in the opposite corner, near the entrance to the kitchen, hoping she would take to it when she calmed down. Knowing her timid nature, I decided to leave her alone, despite being worried about her. Actually, I thought her plan was a pretty good one, and I fought my own desire to go hide in the bottom of my closet.
Instead, still feeling jumpy inside, I went to the kitchen and turned on the laptop that perpetually sat on the kitchen table – I don’t know why I expected to find an answer on the internet as to why a Sasquatch had chosen to visit my yard that night, or what I should do about it, but believe me when I tell you that I read the entire internet as fast as I could, looking for answers.
I was alarmed to read about how Bigfoot was known to kill dogs. I was perplexed as most of the reports of Bigfoot killing a dog came during the dog barking at it. But Mama had never made a sound, I suspect, until the Bigfoot was very near, so I don’t think she drew it to the porch by noise alone. I wondered if it smelled her. Do they hunt by smell? I couldn’t find a definitive answer.
I was still reading everything I could about Bigfoot online when I heard Mama’s nails clicking on the linoleum floor in the laundry room as she began to pace back and forth. I was glad she had come out of the corner, but then became worried that the beast had returned, and she could smell it, but that was not the case. It was a little later when her breathing started to pick up and she laid down on the pallet I had made for her. Yep – she started giving birth. I left the internet Bigfoot world behind and knelt by her as I suspected her labor was about to begin.
I had been sitting with her for a while when she gave birth to the first puppy. About ten minutes later, I heard a distinctive slap against the house. It sounded as if it was just under the kitchen window on the corner of the house that overlooked the side yard – the window that I had been sitting near as I searched the internet. Mama whimpered, and looked at me with large, frightened eyes and let out a half yelp, whether from pain of birth or from fear, I did not know.
Apparently I did learn a thing or two from the internet that night, and I knew what that sound was. I was rather nervous being in the small laundry room with the back door so close to us, but I didn’t think I could safely move mama, so I decided to brave it out. I had little in the way of defense, and what I had was in the garage, and that being bear spray.
There came a succession of several slaps against the house, now, from opposite ends, and I knew that there was more than one out there. Then the screaming started. These were unlike the roar the one off the back porch gave me. These were higher pitched, long and sustained. If the roar earlier could be described as a roar of frustration or anger, these screams would be described as war cries.
Soon after came the sound of stones pelting the house, with the window above the sink taking a direct hit, but not breaking entirely. The rock was lodged in the hole it had made in the glass, while the rest of the window was spider-webbed and fragmented – I don’t know what the term for it is. It looked as if it would fall to a million pieces if you touched it and you couldn’t see out of it.
The rocks kept coming, and it was at that point, that I decided that I had to call the sheriff’s department. I knew I would sound ridiculous calling in about Bigfoot on my property, so I just told the dispatcher that there was someone on my property and had broken a window with a rock.
She told me a deputy was en route and to stay inside.
I went back to check on Mama. She had already delivered puppy two while I was checking out the rock damage and on the phone with the dispatcher, and puppy three was on its way. Just before the deputy arrived, puppy 4 was pushing its way out.
When the deputy arrived about twenty-five minutes later, I was relieved, but nervous. Although the stone throwing had stopped, I then worried that I could be putting a deputy as risk, as I had not fully disclosed what was on the property.
Nervously, I stood on the front porch and told the deputy what had happened. Well, almost everything. Maybe because there were more sightings of that thing either that night or in the area in general, or maybe he sensed I wasn’t telling him the whole truth, but the deputy seemed to be cautiously probing my story, asking more and more pointed questions. I stressed that he should be careful, because I was certain there were multiple “people” out there because the stones had been coming in from all directions.
He walked around the perimeter of the house, and I don’t know what he saw. I peeked from behind the curtain on the back porch, and I caught sight of his flashlight beam bouncing around the ground and then to the treeline several times.
Afterwards, he came inside and looked at the kitchen window, and he asked me about the damage to the back porch railing – I had forgotten to mention that, and I said I didn’t know when that happened.
As we were talking, Mama whimpered in the laundry area. He was curious, of course, so I explained to him that she had been giving birth through all of this. He poked his head in the laundry room to look at her before leaving the kitchen area.
As we stood once again on the front porch, he advised me to stay inside for the night and to call if I had any more incidents, and that whoever it had been, they seemed to have moved on. I asked if there had been any more incidents recently in the area of vandalism, and he said no. For what it’s worth, this time *I* was the one certain that the other person wasn’t telling the whole truth.
Before leaving, he told me that he would make sure this area was patrolled more frequently and he gave me his card before leaving.
There were a few more screams throughout the night, but none so close as to make me worry.
As I sat near Mama on the laundry room floor – and, by the way, Mama delivered a total of 6 puppies, with the last one being stillborn – I thought about all the years I had lived there and had never seen or heard a thing. I wondered if the things had territories, or if the recent run of home building in the county next to us had pushed them over this way. I thought of a hundred different scenarios as to why Bigfoot ended up on my property that night, but in the end, I didn’t have any answers.
And I still don’t.
In the next couple days I had the window and the wooden porch railing replaced.
Mama willingly stayed in the house except for her bathroom breaks, which was always taken out front.
There were no more screams and no more damage.
After a few weeks, I was comfortable enough to sit out on my back porch in the mornings with my cup of coffee once again, and did so, enjoying the brilliant display of October color of the trees.
I did see them again, early one morning, but I don’t really think it was the same group as the ones that were here the night Mama gave birth. Their fur was lighter in color, almost a tan color. They were some distance back in the trees and were just walking along. They seemed peaceful, and I don’t think they knew I was sitting there, so I just watched them until they moved out of sight.
That was six years ago, now, and I’ve not seen or heard anything since.
I had a fence put in for Mama, who no longer fears going out back, but she is still timid with sudden movements and noises in general, and I guess she always will be.
As for her puppies? I found homes for four of them, with one of the homes being with the deputy who responded to my call that night. He did stop by a few more times just to check in – and between me and you, I believe he was actively looking for Bigfoot, but couldn’t say so.
He saw the little balls of fur toddling around in the house and instantly took a liking to the one I had been calling “Brutus”, as he tended to bulldoze his siblings, even though he was the smallest and was the last puppy born alive. The last time I saw that deputy, he was showing me pictures on his phone of his children and Brutus enjoying life and going on a lot of adventures together.
As for the fifth puppy? She is still with me and Mama. I named her Flower. Like Mama she has a sweet nature and I just couldn’t let her go.
I am thankful that Mama came out of the woods and into my home that September. She is my best friend, and along with Flower, we have had a lot of our own adventures and joy, and I’m happy to say not a single one of those adventures has included a Bigfoot.
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