Lighthouse Horror Podcast - I Work At A Pet Store For Cryptids. These are my SCARIEST Stories

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

Join Lighthouse Horror on Patreon: Lighthouse Horror | PatreonNew Merch out! https://hauntedstuff.com/Art & Credits: ninerioartsMusic by Lucas King, Myuu, Kevin MacLeod & Darren CurtisOriginal YouTube link: I Work At A Pet Store For Cryptids. These are my SCARIEST Stories. Copyright © 2025 Lighthouse Horror. All rights reservedThank you for listening to this scary story! If you enjoyed this story, please check out some of my other horror stories. We'll be uploading new episodes every week, featuring ghost stories, haunted encounters, mysteries, true stories, creepypasta, and anything supernatural and paranormal. Don't miss out on the thrill and suspense that await you in each episode!

I work at a pet store called Farmers' Pets. If you walk through the front doors, you'd swear it was the most ordinary place in Michigan. The first thing you'd smell is cedar shavings. We keep the birdseed stacked against the left wall, dog food along the back, and rows of brightly colored fish tanks bubbling near the checkout counter. Families come in every afternoon after school. Kids press their faces against the glass, while parents promise they're just looking. Every Saturday, somebody buys their first goldfish,

Somebody else's hamster escapes inside the store, and somebody always asks if we have a puppy that doesn't shed. From the sidewalk, farmers' pets looks exactly like every other neighborhood pet store, and I've worked hard to keep it that way. People think owning a pet store is mostly feeding animals and cleaning cages. The truth is that is maybe 20% of my day. The rest is answering questions, ordering supplies, balancing invoices, repairing filters, helping nervous first-time owners and convincing children that know, a rabbit and a python should probably not live in the same place. The back of the place, that's a different story. There's an employee's only door beside the fish room. Most customers assume it leads to a storage area or break room. They aren't

entirely wrong. There are shelves back there full of cleaning supplies, extra aquariums, plumbing parts, generators, medical cabinets, and enough dog food to survive the end of the world. But that's only the first hallway. Past another locked steel door is the part of the business I don't advertise. Concrete walls, security cameras, electronic locks, inhabitants far larger than anyone would ever expect behind a neighborhood pet store. People hear the word crypted, and they imagine chains, tiny cages, or some lunatic showing off monsters to anyone willing to pay $5 for a ticket.

And I've never understood that way of thinking. Most of the things living behind those doors didn't choose to exist. They didn't ask to be feared. And they certainly didn't ask to end up depending on people. I don't hunt cryptids. I don't trap them for fun. Most of the ones I've taken in arrived because somebody else failed them. Sometimes I buy them from collectors who have no business owning them.

I rescue them after they're injured. Sometimes, wildlife officers call me because they honestly don't know who else to contact. And every once in a while, one simply wanders onto my property looking for help. Whenever it's safe, I release them. That's always been the goal. A healthy creature belongs in the wild, not by defense. I have released more cryptids than I can count over the last 20 years. Some disappeared into the forest of northern Canada. Others ended up on protected islands or inside remote mountain ranges where people almost never go. A few were simply relocated far enough from civilization that they'd never bother anyone again. Watching one disappear back into the wilderness is...

It's my favorite part of the job. Not all of them get that chance. Some are simply too dangerous. Not evil. Dangerous. There's a difference. A mountain lion isn't evil. is an evil, is it? Neither is a great white shark. You still don't want either one wandering through an elementary school parking lot. Some cryptids are exactly like that. If I release them, people would die. If someone else tried to keep them, they'd probably die too. So they

stay here. Not inside little cages, not chained to concrete floors. If an animal spends its entire life pacing ten feet back and forth, you've already failed it. The property behind the store covers just under three acres. Most people driving past have no idea it's there because the trees hide nearly everything. Over the years I've built wooden enclosures, reinforced fields, artificial caves, indoor climbing habitats, ponds, tunnels, flight aviaries, and one underground containment bunker that took almost two years to finish. habitat is designed around the creature living inside it. That has always been my philosophy.

Respect doesn't make them harmless, just makes me less of a monster. Now Roger Sims has worked for me for almost nine years now, and he still thinks I'm too soft. If it can rip you arm off, it doesn't care how nice you are, he always says. And he's probably right. I never confused kindness with safety. Every enclosure has redundant law. Every gate has two exits. Every feeding routine follows the same checklist we have used for years. Respect does not mean taking stupid chances. It means remembering that the thing on the other side of the fence is still alive. Roger and I disagree about plenty of things, but we've managed to keep each other alive so far. He handles maintenance. I handle most of the medical work.

In between the two of us, the place runs surprisingly well. Most days. The hardest part of my life has nothing to do with cryptids. It's my daughter, Samantha. She's 12. About six weeks ago, she was diagnosed with seizures. The doctors are still trying to find the right medication. And so far, they have been wrong. Twice.

The first seizure happened in our kitchen. She hit the tile hard enough to crack one of her front teeth. The second happened while walking down the hallway. She fell into the wall before collapsing onto the floor. And I was not home for either one. Roger thinks the creatures behind the store are the most dangerous things I deal with, and he could not be more wrong. Now every time my phone vibrates while I'm working my stomach knots up before I even look

at the screen, I have stitched creatures together that most people would run from. I have stood 20 feet away from things capable of killing me in seconds, and none of that scares me the same way seeing Samantha's name on my phone does. The funny thing is, after everything I've seen over the years, the first cryptid I wanted to tell you about, it's not the biggest, not the strongest, isn't even the one I planned on keeping. I found it bleeding behind my loading dock on a cold Tuesday morning, and if I hadn't seen it, it probably would have died before lunch.

Now, like I said, I found it behind the loading dock on a Tuesday morning. It had rained hard the night before, and the alley behind farmers' pets was still full of shallow puddles. The dumpster lid was hanging open, because Roger had forgotten to latch it again, and a wet cardboard box had collapsed beside the back door. I remember stepping over it with a case of frozen mice under one arm, already annoyed because the delivery truck was late, and the front register was acting up. When I saw the bird, first I thought it was dead.

It was lying near the edge of the concrete ramp, half under the metal awning, soaked through and barely moving. Black and white feathers stuck to the pavement around it. One wing was spread at a bad angle. The other was tucked tight against its body. Blood had run down the slope of the dock and mixed with rainwater in a thin pink line. I set the case of mice down, and the crow barely opened one eye. That was the only reason I knew it was still alive.

Wasn't a normal crow, at least not one I'd ever seen in Michigan. It was big, its body was mostly black, but its chest and the lower half of its face were white. The pattern made it look almost painted. Its beak was dark gray, cracked near the tip, and its feet kept flexing against the wet concrete like it was trying to stand but couldn't remember how. Roger Sims came out behind me, carrying him up bucket. He stopped in the doorway and said, Eh, what now?

I crouched beside the bird and saw the wound. Somebody had shot it. The bullet had gone in high near the shoulder, torn through muscle, and missed the center of the chest by less than an inch. I could see where the wing had tried to fold and couldn't. Every breath made the feathers around the wound tremble. Roger leaned over my shoulder. Leave it.

I didn't answer. James, that thing, it's going to be dead before lunch. The crow blinked again. Its beak opened, but no sound came out. I slid both hands under it as carefully as I could. It weighed almost nothing. Wet feathers, hollow bones, one weak heartbeat, tapping against my fingers. It tried to bite me once.

but it didn't have the strength. The beak only clicked against my glove. Roger sighed. You gotta spend three hours and $200 trying to save a bird that is not going to make it, my friend. Open the treatment room, I said. Roger looked at me for another second. Then went inside.

I carried the bird through the back door, past the storage shelves, and into the small treatment room beside the quarantine hole. That room had seen worse things than a wounded bird, let me tell you. The walls were wet tile. The floor was sealed concrete with a drain in the middle. We had a stainless steel table, a surgical light, oxygen, suture kits, antibiotics, heating pads, and a cabinet full of supplies I hoped most customers never noticed on invoices.

I set the crow on a folded towel. It didn't fight, and that worried me more than it. if it had. Before I started, I emptied my pockets out of the counter beside the sink, keys, wallet, phone, loose receipts, and a small plastic container of mince. I set everything in a line without thinking about it. I always did that before working on something small. The last thing you want is to lean over an injured animal and drop your keys onto it. Roger stood in the doorway with his arms crossed. You want me to call Wendy? Yes, I said.

She's going to tell you the same thing I told you? Great, thanks. Then she can tell me while I'm working. Roger made the call. I cut away the matted feathers around the wound. The crow flinched once when the scissors touched the torn muscle and then went limp again. I cleaned the area with warm saline first. Blood kept welling up.

Not fast enough to mean an artery, but steady enough that I had to keep pressure on it. Wendy Parker answered on Speaker after the fourth ring. Well, what did you find this time? Crow, Roger said. Shot. James is being James. Entree wound near the right shoulder. Wing compromised, still breathing, weak pulse, I said.

There was a pause. Regular crow? Wendy asked. I looked down at the white, I looked down at the white face and chest. I don't know, I said. She walked me through what she could from the phone. I'd done plenty of field surgery before, but birds are delicate in a way most mammals aren't.

Too much pressure breaks bones. Too much blood loss ends it. Too much anesthesia kills them faster than the injury. We kept it light. Warmth, oxygen, local anesthetic. Very careful work. The bullet fragment came out after 40 minutes. It was small, dull, ugly, flattened on one side.

Somebody had shot it with a low caliber round, probably from close enough, that they knew exactly what they were aiming at. And that made me angry. Not surprised, just angry. Roger noticed the look on my face. People shoot crows, he said. I dropped the fragment into a metal tray. It made a tiny sound, barely louder than a coin hitting a sink. The wound took almost two hours to clean and close.

The muscle around the shoulder was torn but not destroyed. The wing wasn't broken, but the joint had swollen badly. I wrapped it tight against the body and to keep it from trying to use it. And then I gave fluid, antibiotics, and placed the bird in a cardboard recovery box lined with clean towels and soft packing material to hold warmth around it. And by then the storefront had opened. I could hear the bell over the entrance every few minutes, a child laughing near the fish tanks,

Roger talking to a customer about rabbit pellets, normal sounds from the normal half of my life. The crow lay in a box under a heat lamp, eyes closed, it looked dead again. I watched its chest. until I saw it barely rise. Then I wrote the time on a piece of tape and stuck it to the box.

10.42 a.m. Roger came back around noon with coffee. Still alive? He asked. Yeah, for now. He looked into the box and shook his head. You know, it's probably not going to thank you. I didn't ask it to, I said.

Yeah, that's not what I'm saying. You do this like there is some moral score. I adjusted the heat lamp and checked the birds breathing again. Roger leaned against the counter. You know, you can't save everything, James. I know that. Now you can say that, but you don't act like it. I looked at him then.

You know, he wasn't being cruel. Roger was blunt, but I knew him and he wasn't cruel. He had seen enough things die in that building to know when hope was... expensive. He also knew I usually paid anyway. It's alive right now, I began. That's enough. And Roger didn't argue with that. The crow made it through the afternoon. It made it through closing. Before I left that night, I checked the bandage one more time. The bird still hadn't stood. Its eyes opened when I touched the edge of the box, and this time it made a faint clicking sound with its beak. Easy, I said. It watched me through barely opened eyes and then closed them again.

I lowered the lid halfway to keep the heat in, but left enough space for air, and then I closed the treatment room door, lock the back entrance, and I went home. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture, are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands

with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. The next morning I came in early. The sun wasn't fully up yet, and the front store was still dark, except for the blue glow from the fish tanks. I unlocked the back door, turned off the alarm, and went straight to the treatment room. I expected to find the crow dead.

I didn't want to, but I had done this long enough to know what overnight usually meant for something like that. When I opened the door, I could see something. A black and white shape lay crumpled inside. My stomach dropped. For a second, I just stood there in the doorway. I remember feeling stupid for being surprised. Roger had told me Wendy had sounded very doubtful. Even I had known the odds were very bad.

And then I heard a call from across the room, not loud or strong, but clear. I turned. The crow was near the supply cabinet, hopping slowly across the concrete floor. One wing was still wrapped tight against its body. the other flicked for balance. It jumped once, landed badly, bumped into the bottom drawer, and stared at me like the drawer had done it on purpose.

The thing in the box wasn't its body. It was the towels and loose packing material I had tucked around it for warmth. Some of the white stuffing had pulled free and stuck to the bloody gauze, making a shape that looked like feathers from the doorway. I let out of breath I didn't realize I was holding. Well, look at you, I said.

The crow called again at that. It tried to hop away from me. Made it about ten inches, had to stop. Still couldn't fly. Probably couldn't even climb. But it was up, moving, alive. Roger appeared behind me a minute later with his jacket still on. It died?

He asked. The crow called. Roger looked past me. Well, you look at that," he said. The bird hopped sideways and knocked over a roll of gauze. I stepped carefully into the room and closed the door behind me, so it couldn't get into the hall. The crow watched every move.

It didn't panic, didn't throw itself against the walls, it just kept a few feet between us, and hopped whenever I came too close. I picked up the box and set it back under the heat lamp. The crow ignored it. Roger pointed at the counter. I looked over, and at first I didn't know what he meant, and then I saw the small plastic container beside the sink, the mints I had taken out of my pocket before surgery, the one that had been full the morning before.

It was empty. Every green Tick-Tac was gone, and the lid was still snapped shut. I picked it up and turned it in my hand. There were no cracks in the plastic, no bite marks, no spilled mince on the counter or floor. Nothing sticky or crushed, just an empty container that had been full when I set it down. Roger looked at the crow. The crow looked back at Roger. And Roger said, I guess somebody likes mint.

I should have put the bird back in a cage after that. I didn't. I had a feeling that somehow it would just get out again. So I left the box open. The wolf dog. People always ask me which cryptid. I'd least like to meet alone in the woods. Most expect me to say the Mongolian deathworm.

Some guess the moth man. The answer is neither. It's the wolf dog. Not because it's the strongest thing on my property. It isn't. Not because it's the fastest. It's fast, but it's probably not that either. The problem is that it thinks.

There are plenty of dangerous animals in the world. Grizzly bears, Cape Buffalo, saltwater crocodiles. They're all dangerous. The difference is that those animals mostly react to whatever is happening right now. The wolf dog plans. I bought him almost 11 years ago from a ranch in western Montana. The owner had inherited him from his grandfather and spent near the last year. three years pretending it was simply an unusually large wolf hybrid. It wasn't. The county

eventually got involved after four head of cattle disappeared from neighboring properties without leaving so much as a drag mark. Nobody could prove the wolf dog was responsible. Nobody wanted to keep him either. And that's how he ended up with me. Most people picture cages when I tell them I keep cryptids. And they couldn't be more wrong. The wolf dog enclosure sits almost 300 yards behind the main building. You can't even see it from the parking lot because the tree lines hide nearly everything. Getting there means driving a small utility card through two security gates before reaching the outer fence. The enclosure itself covers a little over two acres, rolling hills, tall pines, natural grass, a creek that runs through the center.

Three artificial dens built into the hillside. Large boulders for shade. Several reinforced feeding stations. From a distance, it looks less like an enclosure than a private nature preserve. That's intentional. If something spends its life behind a fence, I believe it deserves enough room to actually run. Predators that pace tiny cages eventually lose their minds. And I won't do that to anything.

Not if I can help it. Roger says I spoil him. I say exercise is cheaper than rebuilding fences. We parked beside the outer gate. Roger grabbed the meat bucket while I unlocked the first door. You see him? He asked. I looked across the hillside.

Nothing. Just grass moving in the wind. Not yet. Roger smiled. He's watching. He always is. We entered the safety corridor between the two fences. Eight-foot chain link on one side.

Fifteen-foot reinforced steel mesh on the other. Concrete below. Steel overhead. There isn't a place in that corridor where you're ever standing directly beside the enclosure. Again, intentional. The Wolf Dog appeared without making a sound vent. One second there was nothing. The next he was standing beneath a pine tree about 80 yards away.

He was enormous. His shoulders reached nearly to my waist. His coat was mostly gray, fading into black along the back with patches of white around the throat. At first glance, he looked like an exceptionally large timber wolf. And then he started walking. His front legs were slightly too long. stride too smooth. His head stayed unnaturally level while the rest of his body moved beneath

it. There was something almost practiced about the way he walked. Like he'd spent years studying ordinary wolves and never quite got the imitation just perfect. He stopped 20 feet from the inner fence, never growled or barked, simply watched us. His amber eyes moved from Roger to me, to the meat bucket, and then briefly upward. I followed his gaze. The crow sat on the top rail of the outer fence. Its injured wing still rested awkwardly against its side, but it looked far stronger that it had a week earlier. It watched the wolf dog, and the wolf dog watched it back. Neither seemed concerned by the other's presence. Roger opened the feeding hat. I still don't like this. You never have, I said. He isn't normal. Neither are any of them, I said.

Roger slid several pounds of venison through the reinforced shoot. The wolf dog didn't touch it. Instead, he kept looking at me. You want permission? Roger muttered, I think he does, I said. I stepped closer to the fence. Breakfast. And only then did the wolfdog lower his head. He carried the meat several yards away before eating. Never rushed or snapped.

Never acted possessive. Predators don't always need aggression to remind you that they are very dangerous. Sometimes confidence is worse. Roger folded his arms. The wolfdog finished eating, then lay down in the grass. Roger shook his head. I don't like when they started acting friendly. Before leaving, I always walk the perimeter fence.

Every post and latch, every camera. The wolf dog followed from inside, matching my pace, almost the entire way around the enclosure. Never trying to get closer, never fallen behind, just walking. When I reached the final gate, he stopped. I looked back once. He was standing on top of the hill overlooking the property. Behind him stretched two acres of trees, grass, creek, and open sky. More freedom than most zoos ever give their wolves.

Still, offense was a fence, and I hated that. But I hated the alternative more. The wolf-dog watched until I disappeared through the second gate. The crow remained perched on a fence long after we drove away. And for reasons I couldn't explain, the wolf dog never took his eyes off it. Entity three, the mothman. If you ask ten people what they think the mothman looks like, you'll probably get ten different answers. Some imagine glowing red eyes, some picture a giant owl.

Others think it's some kind of demon with wings. Most of them are wrong. I've only seen one, and that's enough for me. The Mothman arrived almost seven years ago after a logging cabin in West Virginia found it tangled in the cables of an abandoned radio tower. Nobody knew how long it'd been hanging there. By the time I got the call,

three different agencies had already argued over who was supposed to deal with it. Eventually someone who knew someone, who knew me, handed over my number. And two days later, it was sitting in a custom-built transport trailer headed north. Unlike the wolf dog, the moth man has never shown the slightest interest in escaping. That surprises people. The truth is, most animals don't spend every waking second trying to break out.

If they're healthy, well-fed, and have enough room to behave naturally, they're usually content to stay where they feel safe. And that's why its enclosure, is my favorite structure on the property. It took almost 18 months to build. From the outside, looks like an oversized aircraft hanger surrounded by pine trees. Inside, it's 35 feet tall.

Steel beams disappear into the shadows overhead. Artificial cliffs line the walls. Dead trees rise toward the ceiling. Natural rock ledges wrap around the perimeter. The center is left. left almost completely open so something with wings can actually use them. There are skylights made from laminated ballistic glass, nearly impossible to break. During the day, sunlight filters through the roof.

At night, the interior stays dim, except for a handful of low amber lights mounted near the floor. I don't believe in locking flying creatures inside little cages where they can barely spread their wings. If something can fly, it deserves to fly. Roger unlocked the outer service door while I grab the food bucket. You still think this thing likes you? I don't think it likes anybody, I asked. I think it definitely likes you more than me. It tolerates me, I replied.

Yeah, whatever, that's about the same thing. We stepped inside. Two steel doors. only one can open at a time. Standard procedure. When the second door rolled upward, cool air drifted out of the enclosure, carrying the smell of damp wood,

feathers, and rain-soaked stone. At first I didn't see it, and that's normal. The moth man is astonishingly difficult to spot when it doesn't want to be seen. And then something moved, not on the ground,

above us. A pair of wings unfolded from the shadows high in the rafters, slowly silently. They weren't feathered the way people imagine. Closer to velvet than feathers. Dark charcoal gray with lighter patterns running through them like tree bark. The wings opened wider, much wider, maybe 12 feet across. The creature released its grip on the beam. and instead of dropping, it simply glided.

One smooth circle around the enclosure. It barely made a sound. When it landed on one of the artificial trees, it folded its wings around itself until it almost disappeared against the trunk. And only then could I clearly see its eyes. Bright amber, like sunlight passing through old whiskey. Roger stopped beside me.

I hate those eyes, he whispered. I slid several pounds of raw turkey into the feeding platform. The mothman didn't move. It never rushed food, never begged, never acted, excited. It simply watched. People always expect me to tell them the mothman predicts disaster. Movies made that idea popular. Books repeated it.

Even some cryptid researchers believe it. They're wrong. The mothman doesn't predict anything. It reacts. There's a difference. Over years of observation, I started noticing a pattern. Every single time someone nearby suffered a serious physical injury, the moth man became restless beforehand.

Broken bones, heart attacks, industrial accidents. I still don't know how. Maybe it smells something changing inside the body. Maybe it hears something we can't. Maybe it's something stranger than either of those. I honestly don't know. I only know what I've seen. Roger doesn't buy my explanation.

You've got confirmation bias, he says. I've also got seven years of notes, I reply. Every unusual behavior on my property gets written down, feeding habits, sleep schedules, weather, medical observations, anything that repeats, patterns matter. Especially when you're dealing with animals, nobody else has spent enough time studying. The crow landed quietly on the railing beside the viewing platform then. It still wasn't flying well, mostly short glides now. Its injured wing had healed enough that it stayed folded normally, although every once in a while I'd notice

a slight hitch when it landed. The mothman looked directly at the crow, and the crow looked back. A few seconds passed, and Roger said, I think they know each other. Entity form. Smallfoot. Out of everything living behind farmer's pets, Smallfoot is probably my favorite.

Not because he's the safest, he isn't. Not because he's the smartest, either. I like Smallfoot because, despite everything strange about him, he reminds me more of an ordinary animal than almost anything else I keep. If you've ever watched a raccoon spent 15 minutes trying to steal a half-eaten hot dog from a garbage can, you already understand about half of his personality. The other half is pure trouble. The first time I saw him, I actually laughed. Not because he looked ridiculous, because he looked impossible. Most people picture Bigfoot as some enormous, eight-foot-tall giant stomping through the woods.

Small foot looked exactly like one. Just shrunk down. He stood barely three-foot tall. Broad shoulders, long arms. Dark brown hair, covering nearly his entire body except his face and palms. Massive feet. Heavy brow. Deep black eyes that never seemed to miss anything.

If someone had photographed him standing beside an ordinary, ordinary Bigfoot, you'd swear they were the same species. One just happened to be much, much smaller. I got him from a retired park ranger out west. The ranger claimed a logging company had accidentally bulldozed part of a cave system during road construction. Most of the colony disappeared into the forest. This one didn't. He broke his ankle. The ranger spent nearly a month nursing him back to health before realizing there was no safe place to release him. The logging operation had expanded. The surrounding forest had become hiking trails.

People were everywhere, and eventually he called me. That was almost, well, five years ago now. Unlike the wolf dog, Smallfoot could probably survive in the wild. The problem is not survival. It's people. Sooner or later, somebody would post a video online. Then helicopters would show up. News crews, hunters, collectors.

I'd rather he spent his life here than become somebody's laboratory experiment. And if I find a good, solid option to release him later, I will. His habitat covers almost an acre. No bars, tiny cage, an actual forest. Live maple trees, pine trees, large climbing logs, natural boulders, a shallow creek running through the center, artificial caves built into the hillside, Platform suspended high in the branches, rope bridges, puzzle feeders, hidden compartments, things to climb and tear apart, and investigate.

Intelligent animals get bored. Bored animals become destructive. So every week I change something. I move a log, I hide food somewhere new, build another climbing frame, replace puzzle boxes, anything to keep him thinking. Roger calls it enrichment. Smallfoot, I think he... calls it a challenge.

You made another one, Roger asked as we walked toward the enclosure. I pointed toward a wooden box hanging from one of the trees. Yeah, he figured out the last feeder in two days, I said, I still think you're making him smarter. I probably am. You ever think that's a bad idea? The outer gate buzzed open. Unlike the wolf-dog enclosure, this one felt almost peaceful.

nested in the trees. The creek made just enough noise to drown out the highway almost half a mile away. Sunlight filtered through the branches. If you ignored the 12-foot security fence surrounding the property, it looked like an ordinary patch of forest. Roger whistled once. Nothing happened, then a pine cone bounced off his shoulder. He sighed. Morning. Another pine cone hit the ground beside his boot. Okay, you done? A third one landed directly on top of his hat. I couldn't help laughing.

Roger looked up. Ah, right, I know you're up there. Leave shook overhead. A small hairy face slowly appeared between the branches. Small foot grinned. Then disappeared again. You encourage this, Roger muttered. I absolutely do, I said.

We walked deeper into the enclosure. Halfway to the creek, I stopped beside a weatherproof storage box. Empty. That's odd. What? The tools, I said. What tools? The pruning shears.

Roger immediately groaned. They're gone again? They're gone, I said. Roger looked back toward the trees. Hey, hey, give them back. Silence, then. From somewhere high above us, came a soft, chattering laugh.

He thinks you're funny, I said. He thinks I'm an idiot. Yeah, those aren't mutually exclusive, I said. And we spent the next ten minutes looking. Not because we needed the shears immediately, because this had become part of our routine. Smallfoot never destroyed things. He collected them.

Flashlights, tape measures, coffee mugs, garden gloves, extension cords, all kinds of things. One time he stole an entire windshield wiper. I still have no idea how. Roger once lost his wallet for almost three weeks, and we eventually found it inside a hollow log. Every card still neatly inside. Nothing damaged.

Smallfoot didn't steal because he needed things. He stole because he enjoyed watching us look for him. Roger finally spotted movement near the creek. There. And Smallfoot sat on top of a boulder with my pruning shears. resting across his lap. He wasn't using him. He was holding him, watching us. Come on, Roger said. Smallfoot tilted his head, didn't move. I reached into my backpack, and I pulled out a jar of peanut butter. Smallfoot's eyes widened immediately. I unscrewed

the lid just enough for the smell to drift across the clearing. Smallfoot climbed down from the boulder, slowly. Never taking his eyes off the jar. He carried the pruning shears over, said him gently on the ground, and then looked at me expectantly. I rolled the jar toward him, and he caught it before it tipped over. Roger shook his head. You've trained him. No, I said. Then what do you call that? A trade, I replied. Smallfoot hugged the peanut butter against his chest and disappeared into the trees before Roger finished talking. Roger picked up the shears.

As we continued checking the habitat, something black landed on a nearby branch. The crow. It had become a regular visitor over the last couple of weeks. Its wings still wasn't perfect, but it could fly well enough now to move around the property. It watched us for a few seconds, then looked toward the trees. A moment later, Smallfoot reappeared. He still had peanut butter smeared across one side of his face. The two stared at one another.

Neither seemed surprised. Smallfoot reached behind a log and pulled out a battered coffee mug, one of Rogers. He set it on the ground and the crow hopped down beside it, tilted its head, and then pecked once at something lying in the grass. Roger bent over. Hey, my pen. He picked it up. I've been looking for this all week.

The crow hopped backward. Smallfoot made another quiet, chattering sound that almost sounded like laughter. Roger looked from one to the other. And then the crow fluttered up into the branches. Smallfoot vanished into the forest. I am going to give Smallfoot the option to leave one day, to go back into the forest. But first we have to find his family, and we have to keep him safe. Entity five.

The Mongolian Deathworm. Now there's plenty of things on my property that can hurt you. The wolfdog could kill a grown man if you ever want to do. The mothman could probably break every bone in your body just by dropping you from the top of the aviary. Even small foot is strong enough to shatter fingers if you ever stopped treating everything like a game. None of those concern me as much as what's buried beneath the sand.

People have asked me more questions about the Mongolian deathworm than every other cryptic combined. Most of them want to know if it's real. It is. The second question is usually what it looks like. And the honest answer is I don't really know anymore. Because I haven't actually seen it in eight years. That usually surprises people.

How do you care for something you never see? Well, carefully. Its habitat sits farther from the main property than every other enclosure. Far beyond the wolf-dogs field, hidden behind a thick stack of pines, is a low concrete structure built into the side of a hill. From the outside, it looks more like a military bunker than an animal habitat. There's no windows, no skylights, no viewing platform, only a single reinforced steel door surrounded by poured concrete nearly three feet thick. The building exists for one purpose, keeping whatever. lives there, inside. Most visitors expect to walk through the glass and see some giant

monster waiting behind it. Instead, they see sand. Nothing but sand. The enclosure measures, a little over 100 feet long and nearly 50 feet wide. The floor disappears beneath thousands of tons of compacted desert sand, imported over several years from multiple suppliers. Every few months more is added to replace what settles or is removed during maintenance. The walls are smooth reinforced concrete. The ceiling rises almost 30 feet overhead. Large ventilation systems keep the temperature and humidity remarkably stable year round. There are buried heating systems beneath sections of the enclosure that simulate warmer ground during winter. Water lines run underneath the surface, maintaining moisture levels that closely resemble the regions where the species

is believed to have originated. As strange as it sounds, I wanted the animal to have a life that resembled the one that was meant for, even if I never actually saw it. The first time I entered the enclosure, years ago, I expected to watch it moving beneath the surface. Instead, nothing happened. The sand looked perfectly still, now ripples. or tunnels, no movement. I stood there for almost 20 minutes before realizing I was making the same mistake everyone else makes. Just because you can't see something

doesn't mean it isn't watching you. Maintenance inside the bunker follows the same schedule every Tuesday morning. Every single one, no exceptions. 40 pounds of meat, always the same amount. Always dropped from the same location. Always behind the same painted safety line. There is only one rule inside that building.

Never, ever step beyond the red line. Everything inside that painted boundary belongs to it. Everything outside belongs in me. And that arrangement has worked for almost a decade. I intend to keep it that way. The bunker remains strangely quiet. Occasionally, grains of sand slide down one of the slopes. otherwise nothing.

It's the quiet that unsettles people. Silence makes you listen harder. Eventually, your imagination starts inventing sounds that aren't really there. A scrape, a vibration, something shifting beneath your feet. I've learned not to trust any of it. Every Tuesday, I wheel the meat inside using the same stainless steel cart. The wheels leave shallow tracks across the concrete. The smell reaches the inclination.

closure long before I do. I stop at the red line, set the buckets down, tip them forward, chunks of meat tumble out of the sand, and then I back away immediately. The first sign is almost impossible to notice. One tiny depression, then another. Then the sand begins folding inward. The meat slowly slides downward. One piece disappears, then a Another. Then the buckets themselves tip over and vanish beneath the surface. Without making much more noise than a rock dropped into dry dirt. The sand settles.

And within moments the enclosure looks untouched. That's why I haven't seen the worm in eight years. I don't need to. Every Tuesday it reminds me it's still right there. People sometimes ask why I don't install cameras beneath the sand, and I've tried three times. The first camera stopped transmitting after two days. The second lasted almost a week. The third disappeared completely.

We excavated for nearly two days before giving up. Whatever lives under that sand either destroys equipment or simply carries it away. I decided I didn't need to know which. Some mysteries don't need solving. They just need respecting. And that's true for most of the animals on my property. has killed far more people than ignorance ever has. I never stand at the red line longer than necessary. I never test boundaries. I never throw objects into the enclosure just to see what happens.

Those are the kinds of decisions people make right before becoming cautionary tales. The bunker is the only habitat on my property that genuinely feels like a prison. Not because it's small. It's enormous. Not because it's neglected. It receives constant maintenance. Because there's simply nowhere on earth where I could safely release what lives beneath that sand. The wolf dog could disappear into the wilderness. Smallfoot might someday have a chance. Even the moth man could probably find some forgotten stretch of mountains where nobody would ever notice it. Maybe one day he will.

The death worm has no such future. If it escaped, someone would eventually die. probably a lot of people. That thought has always bothered me. Not because I doubt the decision, but because I know it never chose it. It didn't ask to spend its life beneath reinforced concrete. It simply exists according to its own nature.

The least I can do is make that existence as comfortable as possible. When the feeding was finished, I closed the bunker door and secured the locks one by one. The forest outside felt strangely bright after the dim interior. Birds were singing. A breeze moved through the pines. For a few moments, it was easy to forget what lay beneath a hill behind me. And then somewhere across the property, a long, hollow scream echoed through the trees.

The moth man. The sound carried farther than I'd ever heard before. I looked toward the main buildings. The crow burst into the air above the rooftops, circling once before flying toward the front of the property. And for reasons I couldn't explain. Watching it leave filled me with a sense of urgency I hadn't felt in years. Without stopping to think about why. I started running toward my truck.

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Not often and not like that. but enough times that I couldn't justify panicking every single time it happened. Still, I drove home faster than I should have. The entire trip took less than 12 minutes. I don't remember a single traffic light. I don't remember passing the grocery store or the gas station I drove by almost every day. I just remember pulling into my driveway and immediately noticing something wrong. The back gate stood open.

Samantha never left that gate open. Not once. She'd grown up around my property long enough to understand that habits kept people safe. Close the door, lock the gate, tell someone where you're going. Simple, important things. I parked crooked, left the engine running, and walked through the front door. The TV was on, a bowl of cereal sat on the coffee table, still half full. Her phone rested beside it.

And that made my stomach drop harder than anything. anything else. Samantha never went anywhere without her phone anymore, not after the diagnosis. If she felt an episode coming, she was supposed to call me immediately. That had been our agreement. I picked it up. The battery was almost full. No missed calls or messages. No explanation. I called her name. Nothing. I checked every room. Nothing. The house wasn't that large. It only took two minutes to know she wasn't anywhere inside. So I went back outside. The yard behind our house backed up against several acres of woods. Nothing dense enough to get lost in forever, dense enough that finding someone lying on the ground wasn't always easy. I searched the garden first,

and then the swing set we'd built when she was six, then the small walking trail she'd worn through the trees over the years. Nothing. And every second that passed made my father, worse. What if she'd had a seizure? What if she'd fallen? What if she'd hit her head? I started calling her name louder. The woods answered with birds. Nothing else. I reached the old equipment shed near the edge of the property, empty. The small creek behind it, empty. I doubled back toward the house, trying to think instead of panic. If she'd gone walking, where would she've gone? If she'd collapsed, where wouldn't I have thought to look? Something landed on the mailbox beside the driveway then.

The crow. It looked healthier than ever. The damaged wing still sat a little lower than the other, but only if you knew what to look for. It stared at May. Then it gave one sharp call. I barely noticed. My attention stayed on the woods. Another call. When I looked back, the crow had found. flown about 30 yards toward the tree line, it landed on a fence post, turned, looked directly

at me, then caught again. The crow flew again, another fence post, another call, and this time it didn't look away. It simply waited. I don't know why I followed. Maybe because I'd already searched everywhere else. Maybe because panic makes people do strange things. Maybe because deep down, I remembered every strange thing that bird had done since the morning I found it bleeding behind my loading dock. I started walking. The crow immediately flew farther, not far, just far enough to stay ahead of me. It never disappeared into the trees, never flew out of sight, always stopping somewhere

visible, always waiting. Fence post, tree branch, old stump. Oh, wait, fly again. I followed it across the back field, past the equipment shed, beyond the garden. Toward a part of the property, Samantha almost never visited. An old pile of storm fell the trees sat near the far fence. Several years earlier, I'd stacked the larger logs there, intending to cut them into firewood. Tall grass had grown around the pile, and the crow landed on the highest log.

It didn't fly again. It only looked down. I hurried the last few yards, and at first I didn't see her. And then I noticed one white sneaker sticking out from behind the logs. Everything else disappeared, and I ran. Samantha lay on her side in the grass. One arm tucked awkwardly beneath her. Leaves stuck to her shirt.

A scrape crossed one side of her forehead where she'd fallen against the bark. But she was breathing. Thank God she was breathing. Her eyes fluttered open as I knelt beside her. She looked confused, exhausted, like someone waking from a dream they couldn't remember. She tried to sit up and I gently stopped her. She had another scrape on her knee, a bruise already forming along one elbow. It looked like she'd collapsed, rolled down the slight slope beside the log pile and come to rest where nobody passing the trail would ever have seen her. If I'd searched the property another 10 or 20 minutes, I still don't think I would have looked there. I called for help, and then I stayed beside her until it arrived. Only after I knew she was

going to be okay. Did I remember the crow? I looked toward the top of the log pile, and it was still there, watching. The ambulance pulled into the driveway several minutes later. The lights flashed through the trees. People hurried toward us carrying equipment. And when I looked back towards the crow, it was gone. Well, Samantha recovered. The doctors adjusted her medication again, and the next few weeks were better than the previous

six. Not perfect, but better. Life slowly returned to something resembling normal. I've never seen the crow again. Part of me does hope I see it again one day. I still owe it a thank you. Well, every morning before I begin work, I still empty my pockets onto the stainless steel table in the treatment room.

Then I unlock the doors leading to the back property. The wolf dog is usually waiting somewhere along the fence line. Smallfoot is almost certainly hiding something that belongs to me. The moth man circle silently through its aviary. And every Tuesday, 40 pounds of meat disappear beneath a sand. There are plenty of other habitats beyond those. Some hold animals that are almost ready to return to the wild. Others will probably spend the rest of their lives here because that's the only way both

they and everyone else can stay safe. From the street, farmers' pets still looks like an ordinary neighborhood pet shop. People come in for dog food, cat litter, aquarium filled with. birds, birdseed. Most of them never noticed the reinforced doors beyond the fish tanks. And if I keep doing my job right, they never will.