In my last entry I mentioned having to take the dogs out while visting my mother because her land isn’t fenced.  I had to go out there several times between midnight and 1:00am (the dogs always seem to want to go out during this hour for some reason) and on one occasion I caught some sort of odd black “mass” (for want of a better term) that appeared to move across the field and disappear behind a mound of dirt (which was about four to five feet high).  I quickly pointed my flashlight in that direction, but didn’t see anything.  I then moved in that direction to see if anything had run behind the mound, but still didn’t find anything.

Upon inspection the next morning, I discovered a couple of darker colored weeds in the vicinity, although they should not have been visible at the angle I was at in relation to the dirt mound.  There’s also the possibility that it could have been some kind of animal (this is in the same vicinity of last year’s skunk encounter ).  However, if it was an animal, I should have seen it when I went around the mound to investigate (and I know my light¹ is bright enough to find any such animals, because I managed to track a rabbit from about 50 yards the first night we were there; much to Boots’ chagrin, since she wasn’t allowed to go chase it).

While I know what I saw, a skeptic will just say that I saw those weeds and my imagination filled in the movement, or that it was an animal of some kind.  There was definitely something there.  I just don’t have any way of knowing for sure what it was.  But I’m fairly certain it wasn’t a plant or an animal.  Maybe next time I’m out there I’ll take my night-vision video camera…

¹ The light in question is a SmartFire M-504C, which is a relatively inexpensive Chinese-made Cree XR-E LED-based 4-C light that produces about 85 lumens on high (roughly comparable to my 3D Mag w/drop-in LED upgrade).  It’s not the brightest light I have, but it definitely reaches out and touches things.