A Southern California man is hunting for quail in the Mojave Desert when he encounters an unknown 3-foot-tall creature. It leaps onto a 9-foot high sign with little effort. What was it?
The following account was forwarded to me:
"My encounter was on October 22, 2005, on a stretch of back road in the Mojave Desert in the vicinity of Joshua Tree and Yucca Valley, California. It was the 3rd or so day of quail season and I was all tagged up and ready to go hunting. I had a little Jack Russell Terrier named Gus that a friend let me borrow for the day since I can't own dogs or cats. I drove out and parked my Jeep on a turnout at a dirt road intersection. There are a zillion dirt roads out there, and some of the bigger ones actually have stop signs at the intersections.
It was a good day, and getting a little late but I hadn't hit my bag limit yet. I decided that I would stay out a bit past sundown to try and bag the last few birds on my permit. I was dressed pretty warmly, and Gus didn't seem to mind so away we went. By the time I hit my bag limit the sun had been over the horizon for about an hour. Getting back to the road was easy enough, and following it back to the Jeep was as well.
Around the time full twilight set in, I came to an intersection with stop signs in both directions and was getting my bearings when Gus froze mid-stride and immediately started growling with his hackles up. He was a pretty chill dog so watching him go from happy little derp to DEFCON 1 so fast was alarming on its own. I scanned the area to see what he might be upset about because my first guess was javelina (wild pigs) and all I had was a shotgun loaded with bird rounds.
As I said, these were dirt roads. Each road is roughly the same width as an average 2-lane city street. On the corner opposite the one we were on, I spotted a creature moving with the same general gait as a rooster, but without bobbing its head. What clued me in initially that it wasn't a chicken was the simple fact that from head to foot it must have been close to 3 feet tall. Based on body mass, I'd estimate that it weighed about 40-50 lbs. I tied Gus' leash to my belt so he wouldn't bolt after it and waited for it to wander off. It loitered on the corner for a minute, then without making so much as a flutter, it made a roughly 9-foot standing leap from the ground to perch atop the stop sign. Definitely not a chicken.
At this point, I decided it was prudent to be armed, so I popped 2 fresh shells in my shotgun and held it at the ready. When I looked back up, I saw its eyes. The 2 things that immediately sprang to mind (this is where the biology geek comes in) were that 1) They were forward facing, meaning this animal was likely predatory, and 2) They were proportionally ENORMOUS, meaning it was likely fully nocturnal.
I realized that a 3-foot tall, predatory, nocturnal, 40 lb animal that can make a 9-foot standing leap was now regarding me from a high perch, albeit roughly 40 feet away, and that I was in a bad position. I leveled my shotgun and unloaded both barrels at it. After the echoes died down, it was still perched at the top of the stop sign but making odd "chirrup" noises that sounded a lot like sneezing. I was reloading when it jumped down from the stop sign and ran away from us through the brush on the adjacent corner. I finished reloading, waited until Gus calmed down, and jogged back to the Jeep.
On the way back through I hit my trail lights at the intersection where this had happened and saw that the stop sign had definitely been peppered well with shot and that the majority of it had been centered on the animal. This animal had taken a 9-foot standing leap soundlessly, perched perfectly on a 2" square area, taken 2-12 gauge loads of birdshot center mass, and SNEEZED at me. On the way out of town, I told the story to the Spanish-speaking clerk at a local gas station who laughed and told his coworker "You hear that? This guero just ran into El Chupacabra!" O
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