Howl of the Heavens ch.14

    In San Diego, in the Zoological institute’s lab, Dr. Samantha York and her colleges plus students have been working on the samples she brought back for three weeks now. Samantha is in the institute’s forensic lab looking at one of the long black hair follicles, which she has been un-able to identify as a known species, when her superior in the division Prof. Johnson walks in; who is an older man with graying hair on top, “Morning Dr. York do you have new findings on the samples you brought back from…. Brooksville was it?”

 

    “Yes” says Samantha.

 

     Prof. Johnson notices she is using chain mail gloves to pick up the hair strand with a confused look he simply asks, “Why the gloves?”

 

     “I will show you, Sam bring over that apple” she calls her young lab assistant Sam who brings over a red apple and hands it to her.

 

     She takes the hair in one hand and says with a smirk, “Watch this.”

 

     She easily slices the apple in half with the hair which she then cleans off with a cloth which as a result is also cut by the hair.

 

      “What the? How can it do that?” asked Prof. Johnson astounded.

 

     “This hair is unlike anything we have seen,” states Samantha, "The follicle has yielded material confirming it to be organic but the strand its self is even stronger than steel of the same dimension. In fact we haven’t been able to cut it for smaller samples until just yesterday when the hair finally showed signs of splitting and deterioration; allowing us to extract a microscopic fraction of the split end as the rest is simply too dense, we couldn’t even cut it with wire cutters before. And the sharpness of it is unlike any mammal’s I’ve seen. I mean the point is like a quill but the rest of the edge is almost scale like in design with a microscopic serrated edge. If I am right this would be the first known Carnivore with quills and the first of any mammal to have this fur structure.”

 

    Prof. Johnson with a glint in his eye says, “Incredible, this is un-disputable proof of an unknown animal, although we will still need to get video tape of the animal and photographs would be nice.”

 

      He gave Samantha an odd look when he said that given her report to him about her experiences in the mountains. He continued, “Of course the ultimate proof will have to either be a captured specimen or a body.”

 

     “well” interjected Samantha, “I would think a capture would be easier unless rocket launchers are available to us given what we calculated out, you see we did a few models with the hair along with my description of the animal I saw and given its size and the thickness of the hair not even an elephant gun would penetrate it. Then there is the tail, if it were to fold that tail in front of it, it would take a tank to break through, and that’s with only the hair we don’t even know what other surprises it has. I am only conjecturing here, but imagine if it also had bony plates under its skin like a giant sloth; this animal would be virtually invincible to anything primitive man could have used on it.

 

     Even with only the fur and not some other defense it would explain why the legend I told you about depicted the animal as a wilderness goddess. Imagine trying to get an arrow through this; and that’s not all we also did a heat test and found this hair has a fire retardant oil on it and the fibers it is made of are highly conductive of electricity even more so than iron. Unfortunately we have been un-able to dissolve the hair fiber with any acid solutions or enzymes, so we have no way of knowing yet of what compounds it is made of. It’s amazing that any living thing on this planet could have hair like this.”

 

    “like I told ya boss its an alien” this interruption by Sam was followed by a little fake laugh,

 

     “Now Sam we don’t talk like that in front of the guy that signs your pay checks.”  Samantha said while indicating Prof. Johnson.

 

      Prof. Johnson looked at Sam with a quizzical look then turned to Samantha while asking, “Do you have any other results yet.”

 

      “Why yes and this may be even more amazing than the hair.” Samantha answered, “I found a pile of feces and animal parts I believe to be the dumping grounds of this animal and I brought back some fecal samples which have yielded some unusual results.”

 

     “Dumping pit?” asked Prof. Johnson.

 

      “yes” answered Samantha, “its not all that odd; the cave its self had no smell of droppings near or around it, so it stands to reason that the other animal that was spotted may have been cleaning the cave and removing any thing that may have attracted scavengers and other predators. After all, I got too close to it, it should have reacted more than it did, that or it simply didn’t think I was a threat. We still don’t know enough to determine any behavioral patterns. But the feces are amazing.”

 

     Samantha walked over to the tubes they were testing the feces with, with Prof. Johnson. “luckily,” she says, “the feces wasn’t as resilient as the hair and it gave us some interesting results. We found several things in the feces of course some of which don’t make much sense to me, the expected fur, and feather fragments were found, however the only bones we found had zero exposure to any digestive acids or enzymes suggesting they were the ones dumped on top, I had tried to get a sample away but a few broken bone fragments were in it anyway, so they either don’t swallow the bones or digest them fully, which wouldn’t be a surprise.

 

      We found some enzymes in the feces that seemed designed to digest calcium and protein more so than any other animal; and the fat content of the droppings was far too high especially for an animal in that cold of a climate, most predators try to conserve fat not simply let it pass through there systems as waste. Which leads me to a hypothesis that these creatures originally came from a warmer climate or maybe even migrate and this one just got pregnant while too far north and was unable to migrate south, which would account for this being the first time ever that the locals had trouble with livestock being taken by it. Of course I am only guessing at this point but this animal will make us all very famous.”

 

      Prof. Johnson looked very pleased by this, “A clever giant animal with a specialized digestive system and armored fur, yes if you can prove its existence, however you will need to go back of course and get photographic proof before we can justify the time and money to send in a team. I would conjecture my self that your migration idea may be off, I personally would think its simply a very clever animal that has been hard pressed.

 

    After all, I did my own reading on those two towns and both have been increasing in size over the years, I have the information sitting on your desk for you I figured you had enough on your plate with the samples.”

 

     “Uhm Thanks” said Samantha, “may I ask why you went to the bother after all don’t you have your own project you are working on?”

 

      “My little alien rodents project is old news at this point, despite it still being a problem, but this type of thing with the large new species now that brings in funding.” With that Prof. Johnson left the lab leaving Samantha to her research.

 

    Samantha was sitting in her office looking over Prof. Johnson’s notes when the phone rang. She answered the phone only to hear the frantic voice of Mayor O’ Brian, “Dr. Samantha York it’s me Mayor O’Brian we have a situation here and you are the only person we know to call. Its just, just horrible, this morning there was an attack, horses and a person this time, he got a clear view of the thing. It was a stable out side of our city the victim is a man named Richard Stevens he is currently in the Brooksville hospital. We would like you to speak with him as soon as you get back if you would. Your description is very much like his, and well, you would need to talk to him your self. I don’t know all the details and our Sheriff isn’t here right now to give you all the details. But I know he described them as giant wolves and he confronted more than one giant wolf; or something like that.”

 

       “Don’t worry I am done with what I can do here for now and was about to head back up there in a few days any way, in fact tomorrow I was going to give your office a call to tell you I was on my way back. Don’t worry I would like to talk to Mr. Stevens about his encounter I should be back up there in three days, I have a few more things to set up before I leave.”

 

     She finished her talk with the Mayor of Brooksville and hung up the phone and thought, “Well at least I have more proof now, but damn it just had to be an attack on a human didn’t it, well back to the wilderness I go.”