The writer would like to be anonymous. A few years ago my wife and I were living in

Laneville, Texas, which is located 12 miles south of Henderson on Farm to Market Route 225.

My wife loves gardens and we always had a chicken pin. Our adult children enjoy the garden

produce and the fresh eggs from our hens. We lived this way for many years and we had moved

there in 1981 and had no intention of ever going back to the big city.

The event that I'm writing about happened in 2015 and it's signaled the end of our chicken

business. Each morning I walked down to the chicken pin that was 150 feet behind our house.

After I fed the chickens and checked their water I headed back to the house to eat my own breakfast.

I had guns but I never carried one around our own property. At that time we had a

terrier named Buffy who went everywhere we did and in her whole life had never shown any inclination

to be afraid of anything but on this day I was in the middle of my chores when Buffy stopped

dead still. She was fixed on something beyond the tree line behind the chicken pin and the hair on

her neck and back stood straight up. Buffy was frozen in place and didn't move a single muscle.

I shifted my gaze to the tree line and what I saw caught my breath. I knew I was looking at

something I had never seen before. This thing apparently had been walking just outside the tree

line and it stopped when we did. It seemed to be the size of a wolf. It's hide was light gray and

there was a single hair on its body. Its rear legs made it appear as though it could easily walk

on all fours or stand upright like a man. The tail was the same length of its body and from where

I stood it looked like a dog until it turned revealing the head that looked more like a feline

than a canine with the similar short-pointed ears. The eyes were something unworldly. They were

bright blue and the thing just bored into us with them for about fifteen seconds showing no sign

of fear and they then turned and walked to the woods and out of sight. I tried to make sense of

...