A listener writes “I had an encounter in 2005 about a week after hurricane Katrina. I’m from a small town about an hour north of New Orleans called Ponchatoula. We didn’t get any structural damage but we did get a lot of downed trees.
I was about ten years old and living with my grandparents. For the next couple of weeks after the storm me and my grandpa would clear as much of the trees and other crap out of the yard. After a few days we were starting to run out of clean clothes so my grandma had me go out to the pond in our backyard to get some water so that she could boil up and wash some clothes in this big 55 gal pot we had (typically used for crawfish) because we still didn’t have any power. I didn’t think much of it and went out there with some buckets. For some backstory we only lived about 3 miles aways from Manchac Swamp and were surrounded by pine forest except for the 7 acres of land we lived on which was clear except for about 30 pecan trees.
Anyways, when I went down the bank I heard a bunch of noise like trees crashing from the other side of the pond. I started watching over there and then what I thought was a bear came out of the woods and stopped at the opposite side of the bank. I knew we had a few black bears in the swamp but had never seen any so I just stood still to watch it. After what felt like a few minutes I saw it reach into the water and snag up a catfish (cats were the only fish we kept stocked in the pond).
Being a 10 y/o who loved nature I thought that was pretty cool until it stood up and stretched. The kind of way someone who just woke up would with its arms reaching up to the sky. I could see that it still had the catfish in its hand. Seeing that thing stand up I froze. I don’t think it ever noticed me because as soon as it got done stretching it simply turned around and went right back the way it came. After a few minutes when I couldn’t hear it anymore I just ran inside and needless to say we didn’t get any laundry washed that night. I never saw or heard anything else after that but yeah that’s my story and just thought that I would share.”
Rick P
Sounds like a good one. Can’t wait to hear it.