An Unidentified Childhood Encounter in Okeechobee, Florida
On a beautiful spring evening two young girls were playing in a wooded lot next to their nannies’ house while the adults sat in lawn chairs in the front yard, catching up on the events of the day.
It was a huge yard full of mystery and adventure to a seven-year-old. A cloths line hung in the back yard next to an old brown wooden barn that stood yards away from a little yellow house. Orange trees still grew on all the lots as it was once an orange grove. Its thick, sharp thorns thwarted all attempts for us kids to climb into its branches to pick the sweet higher hanging fruit, finding the trees thorns a formidable defense. As the adults laughed and talked, the girls played jungle gym on the low hanging branches of a tangle tree that grew on the wooded lot. It provided shade for the grandkids during the summer and a place to tease the cattle that grazed on the fenced field next to the back yard.
The evening was interrupted by the frightened screams coming from the little wooded lot. One of their fathers and his brother bolted from the chairs running towards their screams shouting, “What’s wrong with you girls?” When they got to them, they saw both girls had climbed to the treetops and pointed to a cabbage palm surrounded by thick underbrush yelling about a wolf.
When they climbed out of the tree, frightened, one of the girls was picked up by her father and they both described what they saw. “We were playing,” one stated “when we heard a noise.”
“I looked towards the sound, “she continued, “and saw a huge wolf with glowing red eyes walking on its hind legs coming towards us growling!” “Uncle Jay, it was reddish brown with a thick collar of fur around its neck!” The second little girl quipped. “It wanted to hurt us!”
“Where did it go?’ They were asked. “I dunno,” replied the second little girl, “it just disappeared!”
Their uncle walked the wooded lot looking for the animal they described and the cow pasture that bordered the property but didn’t see any traces of the animal they saw, to this day both of their stories about that day are the same.
Editor’s Context
This account is presented as remembered. No physical evidence was reported or recovered. The location was rural at the time, bordered by wooded land and cattle pasture. The witnesses were children, but their accounts remained consistent over time. No identification of the animal was ever made.
