(scroll down to read parts 1-5)
Everyone has a ghost story.
Maybe you've seen your dead grandmother.
Or you know someone who knows someone who has seen Bigfoot or been
probed by E.T.s glowing finger. Shadows moving on their
own, strange cases of déjà vu, Elvis sighted flipping burgers at a diner in
Austin. You get the idea.
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| "Lets go, boys. I got a gig at Burger King in half an hour." |
I know a guy who claims to have seen a Thunderbird
once. For those of you that aren't familiar
with the Thunderbird, it’s a large bird, some say as big as a house, that comes
from Native American legend. Its wings
describe a thunderclap with every flap, lightning crackling around its eyes; it’s
a harbinger of tempests. Sightings of
the Thunderbird can be found all across North America, especially in Texas,
some as recently as 2007. It was around
that time that my friend saw the creature.
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| "..." |
He was working at the time as a traveling salesman (yes,
they still exist). One day, he was
driving from Kerrville, TX to San Marcos.
The main roads would take him south on I10, thru San Antonio, then back
north on I35. Deciding that the shortest
distance between two points was a straight line, he decided to take the side
roads, one of which was almost a straight shot between the two cities.
If you've never been to that part of Texas, its important to
know that its all hill country over there.
Not so much on the highways, but definitely on the back roads. Hill after hill after hill, valleys every
half mile or so. As you climb each hill,
the road narrows to two lanes going east and west. As visibility is limited as you reach the
top, the speed limit is only fifty miles per hour. But this is Texas, where most people treat
speed limit signs as a suggestion, so it wasn't uncommon to see cars barrelling over
the hills at upwards of seventy mph, dangerously close to catching air and
making the Duke boys of Hazard County proud.
It was as my friend was descending a hill that he saw the
Thunderbird. Nestled in the valley in
the middle of the road, the creature looked to be feasting on a deer. Cursing out loud in shock, he slammed on the
brakes, skidding several hundred feet, narrowly missing the beast but startling
it enough that it immediately flew away, leaving behind its dinner.
Sitting in his car, shocked, his brain was already hard at
work trying to convince itself that he couldn't possibly have seen what he just
saw. As he began to drive away,
carefully avoiding the carcass in the street, he heard a thunderclap and his
car began to shake. A terrible thud came
from above as he realized that the giant bird had landed on top of his
vehicle. There was a screeching of
tearing metal as talons larger than a grizzly bear exploded through the roof
and the car began to lift. It didn't take
a genius to know that it was going to try to carry his car away.
Stepping on the gas, there was a brief tug of war before American
automotive ingenuity broke free and my friend got the hell out of Dodge, burning rubber and cresting the next hill at top speed, nearly taking flight himself.
Of course that story couldn't be real. How could it be? But the twelve inch talon he pried out of the
roof of his car sure looked real.
Like I said, everyone has a story. Before this all happened to me, the strangest
thing I've ever seen was at a Wal-Mart in another city that had its automotive
and lawn and garden dept. on the left side of the building instead of the
right. So Sancho and I decided to ask my
brother for help, who had a little more experience with this sort of
thing. One time, as he was driving home
from work, my brother swears he saw a kangaroo in the middle of the road. That officially makes him more of an expert
than me when it comes to weird shit happening at random.
As I thought about what I was going to tell him, I had a
funny feeling things were only going to get stupider.
Jrx
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