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Bill thought
we’d better take along some serious self-defense. The
stories I had been telling him about the “wild man”
sightings in the Big Thicket finally piqued his curiosity enough
for him to join me on an exploratory hike. He drove in from the
Central Texas Hill Country to rural Hardin County in deep
Southeast Texas and brought an M-14 semi-automatic assault rifle
and a .38 special police revolver with him.
We entered the Big Thicket National Preserve at the Little Pine
Island Bayou Corridor Unit with the intention of following the
bayou upstream to the Kountze-Sour Lake Highway. This would cover
a distance of some 10 to 12 miles through swampy woods,
vine-entangled palmetto flats and heavy underbrush. There had
been a number of wild man sightings in that general area over a
considerable length of time, enough to suggest that the drainage
area of the bayou might be part of its territory or range.
Bill brought the guns and I didn’t object. The Constable
in Sour Lake had already questioned my sanity a number of times
for going into the woods alone, especially alone and
unarmed–not so much for my lack of protection from snakes
and razorback hogs and the like as from some of the two-legged
denizens of those woods who are legendary for their bad
attitudes.
The Big Thicket was famous as a refuge for outlaws and
reprobates for over a hundred years. There are still plenty of
citizens of its deeper reaches who believe that hunting laws are
Communist-inspired and that game wardens make excellent trotline
bait. The “Dog People,” as they are called for their
custom of illegally poaching deer by running them down with packs
of hounds, are never far from their shotguns. They are also
highly suspicious, and are prone to assume that any stranger they
might encounter in their woods is likely to be some kind of
Yankee federal agent up to no good.
The Constable recommended two essential pieces of equipment if I
was fool enough to disregard his advice—a good pistol of at
least 9mm caliber that would take down an adversary even if only
nicked in the shoulder, and a pair of “Big Thicket house
shoes.” He noticed approvingly that I already had a pair of
knee-high rubber boots, and he just happened to have an extra 9mm
pistol that he would sell me, even if somewhat illicitly at the
time, for a good price.
What the Constable didn’t suspect was that I had
considerable reason to believe that there is more than one
two-legged species native to the Thicket. What I didn’t
even attempt to explain to him was that I felt somehow that this
other species would sense it if I were armed and is intelligent
enough to keep itself hidden even if it were keenly and
stealthily observing me. I had good intentions toward the wild
man and, naively perhaps, had faith that it would understand
that. As foolish as it might seem, I was willing to give it the
jump on me just for the chance of seeing it and satisfying my
curiosity. I did wonder, though, if I could outrun that old
Booger, particularly with those damn rubber boots on.
Thus, I decided not to buy a gun for myself. I was frankly glad
to have a willing companion in Bill for this particular trip,
though, and after advising him of the risks involved, acceded to
his judgment that we should not go unarmed. About a half hour
into the woods we paused for awhile and practiced firing the
guns. The rifle had a strong kick and was so loud it left our
ears ringing. We shot at pine cones and dead branches of trees
that had long ago jammed the slow-moving currents of the
tea-colored water. All the while I wondered what kind of
protection these guns would afford us if we were to actually
encounter the elusive man/creature. If the sightings stories were
as reputable as they seemed, it could be something formidable to
deal with. And it wasn’t just a matter of whether our arms
were of sufficient caliber to bring it down, should we have a
hostile encounter.
There was something strange about the sightings stories,
something that suggested that the creature has an intelligence,
maybe even a psychic nature, that gives an other-worldly quality
to it, as if it were a nightmare somehow materialized into the
real world. But it was this weird aspect of the stories and of my
own experience that I found so compelling.
We trudged through some of the thickest woods in North America,
staying as close to the bayou as possible. In the vast green sea
of trees, whose dense canopy prevented us from even using the sun
for guidance, the bayou provided the only landmark to avoid
getting lost without having to constantly refer to a compass. The
woods were also more open and the going easier in the flood
plain.
The passing hours slowly accumulated into the better part of a
day without anything happening of much consequence. But the water
in several stretches of the bayou was remarkable; where it was
normally muddy or clear-brown, today it was clear and blue. Then
we came to a tributary near the confluence of Black Creek, where
swamp water as black as crude oil protrudes into one of the blue
holes. This meant we were nearing the end of our hike, and that
we were no more than an hour or so from the highway. Then we
heard it.
Bill noticed it first. From my days of birding and many hours
spent in the woods I recognized it as the cry of a hawk. There
was something peculiar about it, though. As we stood silent and
listened, we realized that these were distress calls. Something
was causing that hawk considerable grief. Then its cries were
abruptly cut off.
It’s hard to judge the direction and distance of sound in
the deep woods, but we began to suspect that the hawk had been
just upstream from where we were when we first heard it. It
occurred to us that the hawk had been shot or otherwise had met
some dreadful end, but we had not heard any gun shots or any
sounds other than the hawk’s distressed cries. Even if the
hawk had met its demise, the odds of our actually finding it were
very remote in woods that thick. That’s what made it so
remarkable that we soon did find the hawk—or what was left
of it.
It was directly in our path where a dim game trail, traced
probably by deer and feral hogs, crossed a small clearing by the
bayou. At the base of a huge pine tree we found the wings, tail
feathers, legs, and talons of an extremely unlucky Cooper’s
Hawk. There is little question it was the same hawk. The talons
were still limp, and the tendons, ragged and exposed where the
legs had been ripped from the hawk’s body, were still
moist.
It was as if something had taken this poor bird by the feet,
spread its legs, chomped down on it, and swallowed it whole after
spitting out the less digestible parts. You may know something
that can do this to a hawk, but I don’t.
There were no obvious clues in the clearing, no tracks or signs
of a struggle. I could think of no natural predators that would
even be inclined to attack a fairly good sized hawk, which is
itself a predator. There are only a few animals native to the
Thicket that would even be large enough, and most of these such
as coyotes, foxes, bobcats, cougars, or maybe a Great Horned owl
are nocturnal and wouldn’t be likely to hunt in broad
daylight. We had neither seen nor heard any signs of dogs during
the entire hike.
It would be very unlikely that any of these animals could catch
a hawk on the ground. Even if the hawk had been wounded and was
disabled and already on the ground, it is unlikely that any of
these animals could do what was done to this poor bird without
leaving any tracks in the muddy clearing.
You may think that there is an entirely reasonable explanation
for this event and that it was merely coincidental that we just
happened to be there, no matter how unusual it was. Bill and I
were equally sure, with the kind of uncanny feeling you get when
you’re in an unfamiliar place and sense that you are being
watched by unseen and sinister eyes, that someone or something
intended for us to understand that it could tear us apart limb
from limb just as easily as it had that unfortunate hawk.
I couldn’t help but wonder if whoever or whatever had done
this would have revealed itself if we hadn’t implied
hostile intent by having the guns with us. Bill, ever more
vigilant than me, wondered what that someone or something would
have done to us if we hadn’t had the guns. We got the
message. We were on unfamiliar ground. We had blundered, even if
intentionally, into someone else’s territory, and we were
lucky. Like a good-natured policeman will sometimes do with a
first time traffic offender—this time we were just given a
warning.
Copyright 2001 A. Rob
Riggs
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