As a field biologist, some scary stuff has happened to me in the past. I radio-tracked rattlesnakes for years in Arizona. You encounter weird stuff at night in the desert. #scarystories
One day I kept smelling a strange scent all evening. It was musky, feral, and funky. I couldn’t place it.
The smell was really strong when I tracked a snake deep up into a rocky area that I had never gone to before. I rounded a bend and was struck in the face with the smell.
I had found a little den where a large mammal bedded down. The duff on the ground was all flattened, the smell was strong, and there were big prints in the dirt.
I scuttled away rapidly. Me, the fearless scientist studying big rattlesnakes, was completely freaked out from stumbling into a large creature’s empty bedroom.
Later that night, after dark, I was tracking some snakes down in the flats. The smell kept hitting my nostrils. I would sniff my field shirt, thinking “Am I just super stinky today?” Nope. I mean, I was stinky, but this smell was not coming from me. It was the smell from the den.
I kept looking around, but of course I didn’t see anything. My strong flashlight lit up the area around me within a few meters, and everything outside that ring was black. I was alone.
Done tracking snakes for the night, I returned to my truck around 2am. I got out my sleeping bag and plopped on the desert floor, as was my routine. I would wake at 6am and track the snakes again.
I remember staring at the stars, just starting to drift off. That’s when I heard the sound. It was close. It was coming from a wash on the other side of a large crop of mesquite trees.
To this day I cannot adequately describe the sound. It was unearthly. It was like a loud, piercing wail of anguish. A curdling, guttural, feral cry in the utter and complete darkness.
The best parallel I can draw is almost as creepy as the sound itself: it was like a cross between an animal being tortured and a person being violated. I’m sorry. But that is exactly what it sounded like.
I shot up in my cocoon and immediately tumbled back over, face in the dirt. I scrambled out of my bag and stood there, unable to hear anything but my heart thumping in my chest.
That’s when I smelled it, again. Stronger even than when I had unwittingly found its den. The musky, predatory smell literally punched me in the face.
I couldn’t see past the mesquites. I didn’t need to. I could hear and smell it. It was about 20 feet away.
I’ve never gathered my gear into my truck and stomped on the clutch faster than at this moment. As I zoomed away into the night, I bottomed out in all the washes and probably left some important parts of my truck behind in the desert.
Several miles away I stopped to breathe, to check my truck, and to change my underwear. :-) What creature had I just encountered?
Was it the Wendigo, an evil man-eating creature from creepy tales my dad told me when I was little? Was it the Chupacabra, that likes to suck down goat blood at night?
I’m a biologist, though. So the next day I asked my mammologist friend. He listened, then eagerly said “Did it sound like this?” and proceeded to make the sound. He couldn’t reproduce it perfectly, but it was the sound.
“Stop! Yes, that’s it. What on earth was it?” By now I actually had my suspicions anyway. He confirmed them. I had heard and smelled a mountain lion. A big adult, possibly in search of a mate judging by its mournful wails. Or maybe in search of a tasty meal.
That’s when it dawned on me. That smell had hit me repeatedly over the course of the night. The cat was tracking me.
I think if I had actually SEEN the cat, my experience would have been less scary. Humans are visual creatures. Being in the complete darkness, with only the sound and smell of that nearby predator to warn me, put me squarely into the cat’s sensory world.
I will never forget that piercing wail or that feral scent. Or that feeling of complete and utter exposure and helplessness. The feeling of being prey.
I never heard those wails again, and that snake never took me near the den again. But occasionally I would see a large paw print, and very rarely, catch a waft of that smell. Although I never did see the cat, I’m pretty sure it saw me. It was watching me.
