I explained what this is in the post below. Now, at the risk of sounding like a complete fool, I am going to relate to you something that happened to me in October of 2007, then I will tell you what happened to me at work today.
I was writing a burn plan for some prescribed fire units. I had been working here in Republic for a couple of months and, as you may remember, I got back surgery that year and was confined to the office. The first time I went out into the field after surgery was to go look at the units I was writing the plan for. I spent a few hours looking at various things on the unit, then decided to walk the unit boundary to find a good spot to put in some fireline. The unit had been logged, so it was pretty open, but outside the unit was so thick with trees you could only see 20 feet or so outside the unit. As I was walking the boundary I heard a large stick break in the thick trees. I looked, but as mentioned above, I couldn't see back into the trees. So I kept walking, and I heard another big stick break. Then another one, then what sounded like a stick being hit against a tree. So, deciding that since I was about 3 months out of back surgery, and that any wild animal I had to shank with my knife would probably die of embarassment at getting it's a$$ handed to it by a cripple like I was at that point, I turned around and started walking back to my truck. As I walked back to my truck I kept hearing sticks break off in the thick trees, and the sounds were keeping pace with me as I went back to the truck. I decided I really didn't have the time to kill anything creepy in the woods that day, so rather get involved in something time consuming like that, I decided to run back to my truck. Sticks kept breaking off to my side keeping pace with me again. I got back to my truck, tried desperately to change my fight or flight reaction away from the fight side so I could drive home, and went back to the district office. Being new there I was kind of hesitant to tell anybody about how I almost killed a moose (that's what I figured it was), but I told a guy that worked there named Bill. Bill asked me what I thought it was, and I told him I thought it was a moose, and Bill said there's alot of Bigfoot sightings in this area. I figured I didn't have a bigfoot story in my arsenal yet, so I decided it must of been a bigfoot. Then I never told anybody the story, except I might of told Dad, because people with bigfoot stories are generally thought of as crazy lunatics. I basically forgot about it, until I saw something run across the road in front of me the next spring in the same area, that was probably a bear, but since it was close to the same place, I decided it was actually Bigfoot. Then I forgot about that until today.
At work today, our front desk lady, Dortha, said somebody at the front desk had some questions about prescribed fire. I went up to talk to them, found out they owned some land we are going to burning next too this fall and they wanted to know about the burn. I told them about what we were planning around their property, as well as some other projects we had planned in the area. They asked if we were doing anymore logging in that area, and I said we had finished logging in there. The guy said good, he didn't think the yeti would like being disturbed. I said "Yeti?" thinking "Crazy lunatic" to myself, and the man and his wife told me how a yeti lives near their property, "Right about here", the man said and pointed on our front desk map exactly where the unit is that I was walking through when I heard the bigfoot following me. I said "Your bleeping kidding me", which I probably shouldn't have blurted out in the front reception area of the district office, but oh well. I told them about what happened to me, they told me all the weird stuff they've heard at their place at night, then told me they don't go outside at night up there. I ran back to the fire shop and told everybody what happened, which earned me some crazy lunatic looks and a lot of laughter. I told the kids about it today, and now Simon won't go out in the front yard by himself. Faith's gonna be mad at me. Well, me and the boys have birthday cake to make. I'll probably post some more pictures later.