Maybe it is time for me to stop watching all those YouTube videos about shapeshifters, skinwalkers, werewolves, and wendigoes. I say that with tongue-in-cheek jest, as it won’t happen — at least not anytime soon.
It was 5 a.m., and I had gone to my truck to start it and warm it up to melt the skin of ice it was encased in, especially the windshield. As I closed the truck door, I heard a hoarse barking, looked up, and saw a rather large dog come racing at me.
A second later, I realized it was a neighbor’s pup, Henry, a Mastiff-Cane Corso mix. Slowly catching up came the dog’s human, jogging, huffing, and puffing as she ran after the friendly beast.
A butt scratch, a rub behind the ears, and a short chat with my neighbor, and it was back inside for me to get warm. Besides, she and the dog were on a morning walk for exercise.
Ten minutes later, I climbed in the cab, slammed and locked the door behind me, snapped my seat belt across my body, released the parking brake, and slipped the truck in gear. It drove up the street, still adjusting the heater, the wipers, and my radio.
Approaching the top of the hill, I saw someone standing next to a tree in the corner yard.
“What in the…” I started to say.
The person had one arm outreached, leaning on the tree, head lifted and sniffing a bag of birdseed hanging from a branch. Then it looked at me, and I saw the damned antlers on it.
My brain screamed in panic, and I ran through all the Creepy Pasta stories I had heard over the last three or four years as my bladder leaked some yellow juice before shouting, “Wendigo!”
Instinct said — drive faster, faster, you fool, you fool — as I spun out on a patch of ice in the intersection. Then the cryptid sprinted by me — slow enough for me to realize it was a White Tail buck with his tail up as a warning.
Odd, he should think he was so scared, feeling it necessary to warn whatever other fellow deer were in the area with his raised tail like a flag because I’m the one who returned home to change skivvies.
The Old Blog in the Desert 