Many many years ago, I had returned home from a friends. Think rural country road, cinder block garage a few yards off a dusty road that was separate from the house. A single industrial lamp fixture burning a 100 watt bulb swarmed by moths and insects. The night is heavy, hot and humid. Crickets and katydids turn nights silence away.

Like I've done many nights, before going inside I would walk to the other side of the road to take a leak in the bushes, and as I was finishing up... What the hell was that?!? Something was moving toward me.

Now I've been scared, gun pulled on me etc, but whatever I was seeing had me frozen, I literally couldn't move, I was affixed as the little character bent down to climb through a hole in a rusty cattle fence overgrown with brush. A grey body, big eyes, hard to make out in the dull glow of the garage light and whatever faint moonlight existed, approached to within a few feet and stopped. All I could do was try and think of how much I love the Earth, the science of the universe and my reverence for nature and that of the natural world, and it stared, seeming to read my thoughts.

And like that it turned around and went back through the hole in the fence from whence it came, diminishing into the darkness of the night. Finally I was released and my muscles began to work. Half-way to the house, I began to wonder if that was real, like my memory of it was already fading quickly. I never said I saw an alien or anything like that, however I have told the story about the grey thing with little hands that had me paralyzed with fear.

Not so long ago I witnessed a raccoon walking and I sometimes wonder, was it a raccoon? Was it just the low light, brain filling in faint details of an out of world visitor??? I certainly would like to know.