The summer of exotic animals (1987)

The summer of 1987 saw several tales of 'alien animals' in Bucks County, just north of Philadelphia.

A monkey was seen on July 15 in a cornfield along State Road in the area of Cutoff Road. A motorist driving the road said that a monkey "with an armful of sweet corn" ran across the road and into a wooded area. Police questioned farmers as to sightings of the monkey, but none had made any - unless it was the troublesome primate which had stolen no less than four rows of corn from one field.

(It should be noted that another erratic ape - the so-called "Monk" - seen in Latrobe in 1945 had a similar hankering for corn.)

But by Wednesday of that week, the monkey had moved on and was reported from the part of the township nearest the Lehigh County border. Shortly after ten o'clock that morning, the monkey had crossed the border into Coopersburg, Lehigh County where it was seen a few times scampering along on people's porches and splashing through swimming pools.

This monkey, though, was only "aping" a previously made sighting. On July 6, another monkey - this one a rhesus - was seen in East Rockhill Township in the area of Old Bethlehem Pike and Rich Hill Road. But while it might be tempting to speculate that the East Rockhill and Springfield monkeys were the same, such was apparently not the case as sightings of both were made on the same day. Most likely these monkeys were escapees from animal testing outfits (the Buckshire Corporation, which is involved in animal testing, is located in nearby Dublin and a monkey which roamed the area in 1984 was an escapee from Buckshire).

On about July 16, a two-foot long iguana was captured hiding in a bush in Doylestown. However, it was discovered that the reptile was one which had escaped from its owner on July 9.

Only two days after the saga of the Bucks/Lehigh monkey began, on July 17, two policemen in Nockamixon Township reported seeing a panther. Police later received many other reports of the large feline. A local store jokingly put a $100 bounty on the head of the cat, but that was later retracted after complaints from the Pennsylvania Game Commission.

On the same day that the monkey crossed into Lehigh, officials from the Philadelphia Zoo declared that the tracks of the "panther," which had been recovered, were merely those of a large dog. However, they were careful not to discount the possibility of some sort of large cat frequenting the area. The area is favorably close to where Tunis Brady shot his cat.

The next day, police in Bedminster Township reported that "People just called in... to say they saw a 24-inch long bobcat or panther. The people approached the animal. It let them get close and then scurried away."

Even the size of this one tallies well with a smallish bobcat or domestic cat. As many folks have shown time and time again, a large domestic cat is all that many reported "panthers" turn out to be.

An armadillo found in New Castle (1927)

From the New Castle News (Oct. 11, 1927):

Throngs of people were busy all morning at the window of the C. Ed. Smith Hardware company store on East Washington street, viewing the strange animal captured by Dewitt Gormley in the corn patch of Wesley Gormley, his father, who resides on the Harlansburg road.

The strange animal was eating corn, when discovered and captured. The animal has been found to be an Armadillo, a native of the warm climate of Mexico and other far southern countries.

It has a hard shell covering on its body, which is in the nature of armor plate to it, protecting it from its enemies. It can and does draw its head into the shell when the occasion demands it. It can run and jump with ease and great speed.

How this strange animal of the tropical clime came to be stealing its food in the corn patch of the Gormley farm is not known. It is thought possible that it may have been at the New Castle Fair and escaped from its owner at that time.

Monkey found in Chambersburg (1955)

From the Racine (WI) Journal-Times (March 30, 1955):

Chambersburg, Pa. (AP) - Twelve-year-old Dennis Summers was puzzled when he found a dead monkey wedged in the branches of a tree. It had died of exposure. The police were mystified too. They had no reports of a missing monkey and a check of residents known to own monkey pets showed that all were safe.

No one could offer an explanation.

Nothing like keeping it short and to the point, I guess, if it does sound like it was written by a second grader.

Henry W. Shoemaker, Part VI: The Gorilla

In 1922, Shoemaker wrote Allegheny Episodes, which contained a tale called "The Gorilla". The tale, a story of murder and revenge, was a fictionalized account based on actual incidents which took place in the early 1920s in Pennsylvania and Maryland. These events are chronicled by Chad Arment.

The first incident, and apparently the one Shoemaker's story was based on, took place in December, 1920 when Samuel Bolig, 13, was attacked by a "gorilla" on his father's farm in Globe Mills (Snyder County), and his knee dislocated in the attack. It was said that the gorilla was an escapee from a circus in Williamsport. It was later reported that no other inhabitants of the area had reported sightings of the ape.

However, as an article on the case in the North American BioFortean Review reveals, a whole flap of sightings surfaced in 1921 from Adams County and surrounding areas.

1. Gettysburg (Adams County), January 19: The gorilla was spied sitting on a rock at Mount Rock. The only Mount Rock I could find is in Cumberland County, but it is described as very close to Gettysburg.

2. Idaville (Adams County), January 20: An animal described by some as a gorilla and by some as a kangaroo (shades of the Dorlan Devil) was pursued on Snyder's Hill and also on Pike Hill. It fled towards Cumberland County. Several hams were stolen from William Chamberlain's smokehouse and attributed to the gorilla.

3. Sunnyside (Cumberland County), January 24: Another sighting. A hunt was launched.

4. Waynesboro (Franklin County), January 26: Harry Shindledecker saw the gorilla near the baseball fields on Chestnut Street.

5. Rouzerville (Franklin County), January 26: The animal was seen by Henry Needy crouched at his brother's farm. Needy and two others hunted the gorilla, which they cornered at Mike Lookabaugh's farm, but it escaped. At one point, the hunters killed a black dog which they took to be the gorilla. The newspaper reported that Rouzerville had not known such excitement "since Lee's battered and disorganized legions came thundering down the mountain after the Battle of Gettysburg".

6. Monterey (Franklin County), January 26: In the evening, the animal was seen near the golf course on Mentzer's Gap Road by William Flohr and Maurice Molesworth. It was described as being about five feet tall. It approached them on all fours and made gurgling sounds.

7. Chambersburg (Franklin County), January 27: The gorilla was seen by Paul Gonder, who was gathering wood near Black's Gap.

8. Pen Mar (Franklin County), January 30: John Simmons saw the gorilla in broad daylight.

9. Rouzerville (Franklin County), February 2: The gorilla was seen crouching alongside s fence making a gurgling sound.

10. Franklintown (York County), February 9: Abraham Lau shot at what he thought was the gorilla and found he had shot his neighbor's mule.

11. Jack's Mountain (Adams County), February 9: Harvey Minnich and Frank Rodgers saw the gorilla as they were returning from York to Waynesboro.

A few weeks later, the editors of the Waynesboro Press ran another story of a supposed gorilla killed by William Quimby, a farmer in Queen Anne's County, Maryland. The encounter supposedly took place at Willoughby, a widely-dispersed handful of farms south of Starr and right on the southern border of the county. This story was apparently meant to close the case of the Pennsylvania gorilla, but it is unclear what, if anything, this case had to do with the Pennsylvania ones.

Move over, Punxsutawney Phil

Just after Christmas, 2006, on December 29, public workers near the intersection of South Gilpin and Cypress Streets noticed a large fish lying on the shore of the Mahoning Creek. Upon examination, the fish turned out to be a three-foot bonnethead shark. Officer Heath Zeitler of the Punxsutawney police said "it might have been disposed of by some who had caught it while fishing elsewhere, or had previously kept it in a personal aquarium - a very large personal aquarium."

We might never know exactly where this shark came from. It had been theorized on Cryptomundo that the Punxsutawney shark could have wandered in from the Delaware River and through tributaries and such - while it is true that sharks have been known to wander into the Delaware, Jefferson County is extremely far from that river, and the Mahoning Creek empties into the Allegheny, anyway. Pittsburgh has seen several out-of-place animal reports over the years.

Chesapeake manatee trapped in New Jersey

The Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story on October 17 about the manatee Ilya, which was last seen near a refinery along the Arthur Kill in northern New Jersey. Story here.

Ilya is the same individual seen in the Chesapeake Bay several times, and then near the mouth of the Susquehanna River. He later wandered into waters off of New England.

Annville pythons doing better

From the Lebanon Daily News, October 18, an update on two pythons found in Annville this summer, as posted on Cryptomundo on August 4 of this year.

Sandhill cranes and pelicans

The Lancaster Intelligencer Journal/New Era ran a story on August 18, 2009 on sightings of brown pelicans and that old stand-by of cryptozoological reports, the sandhill crane, in Lancaster County.

A bit more on the Trenton gator

The article appearing in the September 3, 2009 edition of the Trentonian, which was captured in the Trenton, NJ's Stacy Park, contains a quote from Jose Munoz, an animal control officer employed by the city, who noted that the alligator seen in the waters of the Log Basin was larger than the one captured. He said that several witnesses, as well, felt that the caged alligator was not the same one they had seen in the waters - the city's plan was to reset the cage traps after removing the reptile in case there was another one present.

Another Bay manatee reported

The Annapolis Capital for July 20, 2009 reported that another manatee had been seen in the waters of the Chesapeake Bay near the mouth of the Susquehanna River. Policeman Marcus Rodriguez said he saw the aquatic mammal in the waters of a marina in Havre de Grace, Maryland. Rodriguez said that the manatee nosed around among aquatic weeds for a bit and then swam away.

The manatee was identified as an individual dubbed Ilya. Previous sightings of Ilya had been recorded only from the manatee's more typical Southern waters. By August of 2009 a manatee identified as Ilya had ranged as far north as Cape Cod, in Massachusetts.

A Chesapeake loggerhead

The Baltimore Sun reported on August 14 about a sighting of a loggerhead turtle in the Chesapeake Bay off of Kent Island. This is interesting in regards to sightings of Chessie that have taken place in that part of the Bay.

Imagine sitting in a small boat in quiet, open water on the Chesapeake Bay and peering down into the murky depths, when suddenly a massive SOMETHING breaks the surface right in front of you, not four feet away.

That's what Jack Cover reports happened to him this week as he was out on Eastern Bay, not far from Kent Island. Cover, general curator for the National Aquarium, was looking for comb jellies to add to the aquarium's jellyfish exhibit.

Cover reports in his blog that his gaze was diverted briefly by a cownose ray swimming on the surface in the distance, when without warning "a big object lauched out of the water like a polaris missile." His initial shocked reaction was that a diver was surfacing, then he recognized this was a marine diver - a loggerhead turtle.

"It was the strangest experience,'' Cover told me. He says he wasn't the only one startled, either. The sea turtle, after gasping for air, took one look at him and dove back under water. He watched it surface again four more times, each time farther away.

It's a rare treat to see a loggerhead this far up the bay. Cover says they're seen more often in the lower bay, drawn in from the Atlantic in a quest for horseshoe crabs and blue crabs to feed upon.

But it may become rarer still to see the big sea turtles anywhere in the bay, or elsewhere along the Atlantic coast for that matter. A group of biologists reviewing the status of loggerheads for the National Marine Fisheries Service has found that their populations off both the Atlantic and Pacific U.S. coasts are in danger of extinction. The chief threat is from being unintentionally caught in fishing gear, primarily commercial longlines but also gillnets. Their nesting beaches also are under pressure. Dustin Cranor of Oceana, a Washington-based environmental group, reports that Florida officials say this year was one of the worst on record for sea turtle nesting there, in one of their prime areas for laying eggs.

Oceana and other conservation groups have petitioned the federal government to declare loggerhead populations on those two coasts endangered and to impose protective measures. For more, go here and here.

An alligator in Allentown

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on September 10 that an alligator had been found in Allentown, Pennsylvania:

One week after a 4-foot alligator was snared in a Trenton pond, a much larger cousin was caught in Allentown.

Early yesterday afternoon, a passerby reported seeing a 6-foot gator sunning itself on the bank of Jordan Creek in a busy park with a playground, basketball courts and baseball fields.

"We formulated a little bit of plan," said Police Capt. Stephen Mould. "I think it was based primarily on what we watched with The Crocodile Hunter" - the TV series hosted by Steve Irwin before the Aussie was killed by a stingray's barb.

After the gator's neck was snared in a loop of rope at the end of a pole, one of the police or animal control officers straddled the creature and forced its head down as it thrashed its tail. Tape secured the jaws, rope the legs.

"He looks healthy. He's nice and fat and sassy," said Gary Lee, a reptile lover from Emmaus, who said he'd probably keep it in a bathtub until he could find a home, perhaps at a Poconos reptile farm.

The critter, probably an abandoned or escaped pet, seemed to be about 10 to 15 years old, Lee told the Allentown Morning Call.

It was estimated to weigh about 130 pounds.

The Trenton gator, recovered by state biologists on Sept. 2, was lured into a big trap using chicken legs and chicken livers, according to Darlene Yuhas, spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

The Matawan maneaters: a New Jersey horror

On the evening of July 1, 1916, Charles Vansant was swimming in the surf off Beach Haven in Ocean County (New Jersey) when he was attacked by a shark, which stripped the flesh from his left thigh. He died about an hour later. The second attack took place on July 6, when Charles Bruder was attacked off Spring Lake; he bled to death before the lifeguards even returned him to shore. But for all this, the horror was about to come even closer to home.

On July 12, 12-year old Lester Stillwell and other boys were playing at the Wyckoff Dock on Matawan Creek near the town of Matawan, some 16 miles inland. While there, the boys saw an 'old black weather-beaten board or a weathered log' which turned out, unfortunately, to be a shark. Stillwell was pulled underwater and killed; people attempted to rescue the boy. One of these, Watson Fisher, was also killed by the shark as he swam in search of the boy's body. Half an hour later and a half mile away, another young boy, Joseph Dunn, was attacked by a shark, but survived.

An 8-foot long great white shark was killed by Michael Schleisser in Raritan Bay near the mouth of Matawan Creek. It was widely reported that Schleisser's kill was the maneater, although differing opinions surfaced - in 1916, Barrett Smith wrote that it could have been a sea turtle, rather than a shark - an odd theory, to be sure. In modern times, biologists Richard Ellis and George Llano both feel that the shark may have been a bull shark (which can survive in fresh water) although ichthyologist George Burgess notes that Matawan Creek was extremely brackish and a great white may still be to blame.

South American pacu caught near Brownstown

Lancaster Online reported on September 1 about the capture of a South American fish in the Conestoga near Brownstown, Pennsylvania:

Eric Laubach and Steve Bergstrom both thought there was something fishy about the "sunfish" Eric's 5-year-old son, Jake, hauled out of the Conestoga River Sunday evening.

"We were catching some nice sunnies, but this one was a lot bigger than the others," Bergstrom said.

Holding the 12-inch-long fish in his hand as he prepared to remove the hook from its mouth, Laubach got a look at the fish's jaws.

That's when he saw teeth.

"I knew Steve used to have piranhas, so I said to him, 'You gotta look at this, I think it's a piranha,' " Laubach said.

Bergstrom seconded his friend's identification, but noticed "that thing was a lot bigger than any piranha I ever had."

Based on the shape of the fish's teeth and its overall size, however, it most likely is a red-bellied pacu.

Piranhas have a protruding lower jaw lined with triangular teeth used for tearing apart flesh.

The lower jaw of a pacu is flush with its upper jaw and its teeth are closer to square than triangular. Pacus will eat anything, but prefer fruits and vegetables, according to the state Fish and Boat Commission's Web site.

And while a 12-inch-long piranha would be about as big as that species is known to grow, a foot-long pacu is a common length for that fish, which can grow to more than 25 inches.

Pacu or piranha — neither one belongs in the Conestoga River.

Both fish are native to South America, but are commonly kept in aquariums in North America.

Red-bellied pacus have been caught in the Conestoga River before. Officials with the Fish and Boat Commission have said in the past the tropical fish likely were pets released into the wild by their owners — an illegal act in Pennsylvania.

Thinking the fish was a piranha, Laubach and Bergstrom didn't feel comfortable returning Jake's catch to the Conestoga River behind Bergstrom's house on Riveredge Drive in Manheim Township.

So they took it into the house and put it in an aquarium kept by 5-year-old Wells Bergstrom, who was fishing with Jake at the time the fish was caught.

When the men did some research on the fish, they found a notice on the Fish and Boat Commission's Web site that stated such fish should be removed from the wild when caught.

"We called the Game Commission (Monday) and they told us not to put it back, too," said Bergstrom's wife, Tonya.

The fish died in Jake's aquarium Monday, and Bergstrom was considering having it mounted by a taxidermist.

"It sure is going to be something to talk about for a long time," he said.

Note the article says this isn't the first time this species has been found...

Plan to study minks in England

The CFZ News blog has reported on a plan underway in England to study the mink. Minks in Britain are an invasive species blamed for the decline of other water-dwelling animals, most notably the water vole. The planned research involves using sensory collars to log the mink's activities on a daily basis.

Zebra mussels in the Susquehanna

From the Harrisburg Patriot-News (November 30, 2008):

Zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha), normally native to Russia, have been found in the Susquehanna River above the Conowingo Dam in Maryland. Zebra mussels are an invasive species recorded from several locations in North America, including Texas, Massachusetts and the Great Lakes region. The species can clog drainage and intake pipes and kill off native species. Also, in the Great Lakes, they were associated with an outbreak of disease that killed off waterfowl.

More on the Conestoga Capybara

From the Lancaster New Era (March 16, 2009):

Maybe it's TJ, who is still on the lam.

But it's not the roadkill on Route 472.

Theories are emerging about the mysterious creature that a mother and son spotted in Pequea Township within the past six weeks.

Tessa Barnett and her son, Austen, who live in Conestoga, saw the reddish, barrel-shaped creature at Cherry Hill Orchards on two separate occasions. They both said it was large, about 200 pounds, had coarse hair and moved in an odd, slithery, scampering way.

Heather Conver, of Conestoga, wonders if it's her escaped goat.

She and her family got the male goat, which they named TJ, back in October.

Sadly, TJ never made it into a fenced pen at their home on Conestoga Boulevard, which is less than a mile from where the Barnetts spotted the creature.

"He overpowered my dad and my husband when they got him out of the trailer," she said. "He just took off."

The family always has an eye out for the reddish-colored goat, which Conver estimated weighs more than 100 pounds and stands waist-high to her.

Neighbors told her they saw him in a nearby farmer's field about a month after he escaped, but no one has reported seeing him since then.JoAnn Thomas, of Manheim, wondered if the creature wandered southeast and was hit by a vehicle along Route 472, in Colerain Township, across from the entrance to Black Rock Retreat.

While on her way to Maryland Saturday, Thomas passed an unusual-looking animal lying dead on the side of the road. It was so strange, she turned her car around to take a second look at it, she said.

The animal had hooves and "an ugly-looking face," she said. "It was not something I had ever seen before."

Thomas said she did not think it was a deer, because she did not see any white on it. Nor was it a goat or a pig, she said.

Troy Groff, a member of the Colerain Township road crew, also saw the animal and said it was a deer, though he agreed it was hard to tell what it was.

"It really got plastered," he said.

So what is the mysterious creature?

Neither police nor state game commission officials have received any reports of unusual animal sightings. Game officials wondered last week if the animal was an escaped pig.

Patrons at the Conestoga Wagon Restaurant in Conestoga, a local gathering place, are wondering what the animal is, said waitress Lisa Thompson. The topic has created some local buzz.

"They were saying, 'How'd you like to run into one of those?' " she said.

Mrs. Barnett still is puzzling over what she and her son saw.

The Barnetts have a German shepherd, which weighs about 120 pounds, she said, so she knows what that size animal looks like.

"This is much bigger than my dog," said Mrs. Barnett, who works during the week in New York as an executive administrator for a Manhattan accounting firm.

She saw the animal as she was on the way to pick up her son, who works nights for the Executive Coach bus company near Willow Street. Austen, 20, saw it while on his way home from that job. Both spotted it between 2 and 4 a.m.

"I really would like to know what it is," Mrs. Barnett said of the animal, which had a long, straight tail. "I am convinced it could be a big beaver — that's what it looked like the most — but it would be too big."

As for TJ, Mrs. Barnett said, "It didn't look like a goat."

But Conver thinks it could be TJ.

Conver's father, Steve Ebersole, saw the story about the the creature in last week's New Era and told her about it.

"He said, 'I think somebody saw your goat.' I said, 'Shut up!' " she said, laughing. "My neighbor said, 'You oughta go out at 2 a.m. and sit there and wait.' "

"I grew up on a farm and animals would get out from time to time," Convers said. "I thought we'd catch him.

"I'm always on the lookout for that reddish-brown animal standing out in the weeds."

Manatees in the Chesapeake

From the Washington Post (Sept. 26, 2008):

Two West Indian manatees were sighted in a Chesapeake Bay tributary near Baltimore this week in a rare appearance of Florida's beloved sea cow in Mid-Atlantic waters.

Gail Hill, who lives in the Baltimore County suburb of Essex, spotted the bulbous creatures about 6:15 p.m. Tuesday while she was tossing white bread and potato rolls into Norman Creek for the local mallards and Canada geese. At the end of the dock, something wide and gray came to the surface.

"At first, it looked like a big barrel popped up, and then it went under again," Hill, 57, said yesterday. She thought, at first, it might be a large carp. Then, noting a bump in the middle of its back, she thought she might be seeing the blowhole of a porpoise.

Then the animal raised its head to breathe.

"It's got a bulby-looking nose . . . almost like that Michelin tire commercial" mascot, she said. Another soon appeared by its side. A neighbor identified the animals right away: "He said, 'That's a manatee.' "

During that encounter, first reported by the Baltimore Sun, Hill snapped several pictures. Yesterday, the manatee expert at the National Aquarium in Baltimore said the sighting seemed legitimate.

"It is, more than likely, a manatee," Jennifer Dittmar said. One clue, she said, was the bump on the back. It's not a blowhole, she said, but a barnacle, which manatees often pick up in their slow-motion wanderings.

Manatees, docile vegetarians, have been declared an endangered species; collisions with boats are a serious threat. Their population is estimated between 3,000 and 3,500, and their home territories are Florida and the Caribbean.

But some have been spotted around the Chesapeake. The most famous was Chessie, a manatee that visited several times in the mid-1990s and was named for its resemblance to the bay's mythical sea monster.

Dittmar said the Baltimore aquarium receives three or four reports of sightings every year -- usually in August or September, after the bay's water has been warmed all summer. She asked anyone who spots a manatee to call the aquarium scientists' pager at 410-373-0083.

Scientists say that to travel north, the mammals use the Intercoastal Waterway, which can offer a buffet of underwater grasses, or they traverse the open Atlantic Ocean. It's not clear why they come.

"I don't know why they do it," said Cathy Beck, a scientist who studies manatees for the U.S. Geological Survey. She said she didn't know if climate change was playing a role. Beck said her current concern is whether these roaming manatees will find their way back south before the winter, because they cannot stand water colder than 68 degrees.

In Essex, Hill said the two manatees vanished when she and a neighbor got into a boat to follow them. "I've been looking ever since," she said.

"They're not the prettiest faces," she said. "But there's something lovable about them."

--David A. Fahrenthold, "Manatee pair make trip north to frolick in Md. tributary"

A capybara in Lancaster County?

From the Lancaster New Era, March 12, 2009:

Is it an escaped pig?

Or maybe a giant rodent called a capybara?

Or possibly a giant beaver?

Tessa Barnett and her son, Austen, don't know.

All they know is they both saw a strange, reddish, barrel-shaped creature very early in the morning in the New Danville area on two separate occasions in the past six weeks.

"My son and I are totally freaked out by it," says Mrs. Barnett, 50, of Conestoga. "He said, when he saw it, 'I don't want to see that again.' "

Both mother and son saw the animal between 2 and 4 a.m. while passing the Cherry Hill Orchards property in Pequea Township. Mrs. Barnett saw it about six weeks ago, while on her way to pick up Austen, 20, at his job working nights at Executive Coach bus company near Willow Street.

Mrs. Barnett remembers her encounter vividly.

"The animal crossed the road in front of my car," Mrs. Barnett says. "It started out slowly, then it scampered.

"The way I described it is it slithered, it moved so strangely. It was almost like a bear with four broken legs. It looked like a giant beaver."

It had red, coarse fur and a long, straight tail, says Mrs. Barnett, who did not get to see the animal's head.

"I thought, 'What was that?' It wasn't a dog. At first I thought it was a pig. It had short legs."

Mrs. Barnett then wondered if the animal was some sort of escaped exotic pet, perhaps a capybara, the world's largest rodent. A native of South America, it can be seen in some zoos.

Mrs. Barnett works as an executive administrator for an accounting firm in Manhattan during the week. No stranger to either the big city or to Lancaster County, she knows her story sounds a little, well, crazy.

In fact, she did not report her sighting to the police or local officials.

"I told my family about it but I never told anyone else about it because it's weird, right?" she says.

But she also is firm that she didn't dream the animal that passed in front of her car's headlights.

"No, I don't think I'm seeing things. I definitely saw something," she says. "I know animals pretty well. It wasn't a pony or a miniature horse. It was more bearlike."

Mrs. Barnett might have chalked up her experience as one of those once-in-a-lifetime events that can't be verified. But then, she says, her son came home with a similar tale.

Austen saw the same creature on his way home from work early one morning last week. He was sleeping early today and not available for comment.

Mrs. Barnett said her son told her at first he thought the animal he saw, which was standing by the side of the road, was a bear. Then he saw it move.

"The way it moves is so weird," Mrs. Barnett says. "It creeped him out."

Mrs. Barnett saw the animal near the Cherry Hill Orchards store. Her son saw it along the orchard property on the New Danville Pike.

Cherry Hill officials did not return several calls today for comment.

Calls to local police, game commission officials and area residents did not turn up any reports of escaped pigs or pets, but generated some theories on what the animal could be.

"It could be a domestic pig that is escaped and is feral," said Jerry Feaser, state game commission spokesman.

He also said it could be an escaped Vietnamese pot-bellied pig, which some people keep as pets.

Feaser also wondered if the animal could be a nutria, a beaver-like rodent found in Maryland. However, nutria grow to be only 20 pounds, and the Barnetts described the animal as much larger.

Feaser said it is sometimes difficult to estimate an animal's size and not unusual for someone to overestimate weight.

Local game warden Dennis Warfel, who covers southern Lancaster County, said he has received no reports of anyone sighting the animal or any reports of escaped exotic pets.

He agreed with one of Feaser's theories.

"I would think this is most likely a domestic pig that has gotten away from somebody and the farmer hasn't found it yet," he said.

Southern Regional Police Chief John Fiorill said he periodically gets calls about loose pigs but has received none recently.

In the past, some of those calls were in relation to a pig that sometimes wandered from a farm on Slackwater Road.

But a call to the owner of the perambulating porker, named Smeagol after a character in the movie "The Lord of the Rings," revealed it could not be that pig.

"It's been in our freezer at least six months," said Rebecca Francis.

Residents who live along Long Lane, where Cherry Hill Orchards store is, said they had not seen any strange animals.

Clyde Thomas owns a lawn care business across Long Lane from the orchard store. His front window looks out on the property.

He hasn't seen anything but noted that between 2 and 4 a.m., when the animal was sighted, "I'm in the horizontal position."

Lavonda McClafferty, who lives across from the orchard, also has seen nothing.

"I'll be working in the yard all day today," she said, "so I'll be watching."

Mrs. Barnett admits she's a little worried people won't believe her story.

But she notes, "If two people in my family saw it, we can't be the only ones to see this creepy thing."

She does have a sense of humor about the whole strange experience.

Her family watches the television show "South Park," which featured an unusual creature called ManBearPig, described as "half man, half bear, half pig."

"That's what it looks like," she says, laughing. "Maybe that's what it is."

Cindy Stauffer, "Strange-looking, 200-pound creature sighted here"