The Creature

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VI

As I have reflected on Kong so do I reflect on my failure to effectively bring the existence of Kong to some other scientist. It is a protective jealousy which inhabits the minds and hearts of scientists. We work in secret until we have proven theories or have completed our works and then we spring them on the world. If the theories or works go wrong then we don't admit it and keep our secret failures. But hope springs eternal within us and we all wish to make some contribution to the world of knowledge. It was with this high hope that I did approach another scientist with the knowledge of Kong. These events are related later in this story.

From my observations I would have to suggest that Kong was a creature of the deep forest. He ate wild plants with gusto and could kill animals as large as a deer with ease. He broke tree limbs for their fruits. He once broke a wild pear tree limb three inches in diameter like it was a stick. I did not see him climb trees for their fruits but I assume he would if he had to or so wished. If the tree had visible fruit he would shake it and gather what fell. Once he shook an apple tree for at least ten minutes with no results. The tree was about thirty feet high and it shook furiously from its trunk to its top. The lack of fruit fall did not prompt Kong to climb up after it.

I do not wish to give the impression that Kong did not climb trees for he did once and was very expert at it. He was heavy but had great agility. On this particular occasion he raced to the upper branches of an eighty foot tree without effort. His climb with feet and hands took about four seconds, about the same time it would take me to move eighty feet on the ground. It was hand to feet and up onto the branches. He seemed barely to touch the small branches as he sped upwards. He rose, seemed to look around, shook the limbs he we holding with his hands and then descended just as quickly. On his way down however he took time to run his hand into a bird nest which was within his reach. He did not remove anything from the nest. As he hit the ground his pot gut was shaking up and down.

I wondered about the bird's nest incident. Did he do that in search of a bird or eggs. I didn't try eggs on him and I guess he would eat them if he had a chance. There was a pheasant nest near the cabin the spring before I met Kong. It had sixteen eggs in it when I discovered it and in one day they were all gone. There was no sign of shells Around and I just assumed that some raccoon or weasel or something like that carried them off.

Several times before I met Kong I would see the tops of trees shaking in the distance and assumed that this was the wind patterns around the Diggins. After one high wind I had at least a hundred large trees blown over. From that time it was obvious that the wind patterns around the Diggins were modified by the shape of the hills and when an isolated tree started shaking it did not seem strange to me.

The winds and the air around the Diggins held many strange phenomena and I do not associate some of the events with Kong at all. Once I had a strange experience with a small brush fire I had built near the cabin, or rather the cabin site. When I had selected the cabin site I cleared away many of the trees and there remained a lot of small limbs to burn since I kept the trunks for fence posts and firewood.

I had the fire going pretty good on the late afternoon when I noticed that the smoke only rose to about twenty feet and flattened out. I assumed that this was a temperature inversion and the smoke would trail out down the valley. All of a sudden there was an explosive sound and the smoke which was overhead suddenly was forced to the earth. The fire went out, and I gasped for a long while trying to get the smoke out of my lungs. The air became cool and the smoke dissipated except for the smoldering fire which I blew into, getting a burst of flames going. This experience was strange and even my training in meteorology could not explain it.

Another weird experience before Kong was the incident of fog. It appeared to come out of nowhere and stopped just below the cabin and made a cliff like appearance along the road. I had seen fog in many shapes and forms but never a formation like this and a halted one at that. It stayed for a long time and I must admit a chill came over me as I watched it dividing the landscape in two. I took this matter up with my neighbor who was an old woodsman from West Virginia. He said that when he was a lad living near the town of Bluefield one of the spook stories the elders handed him was that when someone who had died wanted to talk to you they would appear as a white cloud near the ground and if you wanted their message you merely had to go and stand beneath the cloud or if it were low enough to stand in it and the message would be transferred to you. Well that's it, I do not wish to digress but those incidents seem to be premonitions of things yet to come.

Anyway my conclusions that Kong was a creature of the deep forest was based not only on his feeding habits but on many other criteria. He was uncomfortable in half light and in broad daylight he hid his eyes with his hands and squinted. From this I conclude that he was a creature of the forest where sunlight seldom penetrated. He did not approach buildings or man made objects easily. Perhaps the others of his tribe never approached them at all.

He was also terrified of cultural objects made of metal, plastic, or glass. If there were others like him around, indeed he was the pioneer of them all since he had approached and befriended man.

Once we sat in the midst of my woods eating, I chewing wild mustard while he ate handfuls of bedstraw that I had mentioned before. For an instant I thought I saw a dark figure through the brush about fifty feet away. I leaped up and ran toward the area to find nothing. After reflection on the event I realized that Kong moved with blinding speed and if there were others of his band about they would have to want to be seen for me to see them. No human could possibly find these creatures in the wild if they did not wish to be found. Many could possibly trick them but this seemed remote. Perhaps a long range telescopic camera might do the trick hut I doubt it. Close range cameras are out of the question.

Someone may someday have a camera in his possession and come upon such a creature sleeping and take it by surprise but even this seems unlikely for Kong's hearing was phenomenal. He would perk up and stare in a direction and later a sound of a plane or car would come from the direction of his stare.

I really don't know how he slept. I assume that he did sleep but this never occurred around me. Perhaps he slept in the daylight hours since I never saw him except at dawn a few times and often at dusk. He was willing to stay late into the night. When I once built a fire near the picnic table he left the area. Figuring he had departed for the night I covered the fire only to have him appear. My conclusion was that he was afraid of fire and this was correct. When I later tested this theory by striking a match, he screeched and leaped away. It is probably for the best that creatures like Kong do not use fire and do not cook their food. Imagine what would happen to the large forests if there are many such creatures and they used fire as humans do.

I have stated that Kong would only whimper and screech but on one occasion he made another sound which seemed to emanate from his stomach and chest. One moonlit night after I had squared my absence from home with the powers that resided there I sat on the porch of the cabin drinking some cheap red wine when Kong appeared. His eyes reflected the moonlight in a manner that created a ghostly set of pits in his head. The only item in my experience to compare with this was the appearance of the Walleye fish. This species is also known as a pickerel and yellow pike. The fish have these ghostly round moony eyes. That moonlit night the eyes of Kong were like those of a small animal when car headlights beam upon them.

I came down from the porch and squatted and Kong immediately squatted but rose again and started to walk away. I followed. He led me on a rather brisk walk through the weeds and into cut over patches where berry bushes and scrubby thorny brush abounded. All the while he made this singing noise with his chest and stomach. Finally I had to quit the race since I was exhausted as well as badly scratched and cut from the bushes. Kong continued on and didn't look back as I returned to my cabin to bathe my wounds and remove thorns.

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