Little Lion
I Was Raised In A Haunted House. This is a three room house. The kitchen was on the south side. There were no doors on the inside of this house, just curtins between the rooms. Kitchen ranges of that time period stood up on legs which were about thirty inches long.
As I looked into the kitchen one evening, there beneath the range sat an animal! It would have weighed, I'd guess, between fifty and one hundred lbs. It was light tan in color. Its face and head was like that of a female lion. Its front legs were short, like a kangaroo's. Its eyes were sometimes yellow, sometimes red. It was looking at me. It scared me silly! Even worse, over the years, I learned that only I could see this thing. It was no ghost; it was real!
After my first sister was born, the living room davenport became my bed. I would often wake up in the night and find this animal looking at me. In fact his watching me was what woke me up! But, over time, I learned that he could not come into the livingroom.
As time passed, dad began building two rooms on the west side of the house. My parents couldn't understand why I wasn't thrilled at the promise that the old kitchen would be my new bedroom. Oh sure, with the animal! But only I knew that he lived there.
One day the rooms were finished. One of the neighbors gave me a bed. It was a set of bunk beds, but they had been used so hard that only one bunk was usable. I set it up so that I was in the top bunk. There just was no bottom bunk!
I had learned that this animal avoided me when I had my 22 rifle. He seemed to be afraid of it. Well if he was afraid of my 22, he'd be even more afraid of grandpa's 44! I trook grandpa's 44 to bed with me the first night I slept in my new room. But mother came in to tuck me in and discovered that I was sleeping with a rifle, and the gun went to the floor! I got up and moved my top bunk down to where I could reach the floor and grandpa's gun!
Try as I might not to, I went to sleep. I awakened to discover my animal looking at me. He was sitting on a wash stand mother had made for me out of orange crates. If he had weighed as much as I thought he did, he would have broken them down!
I, slowly as a cat stalking a mouse, snaked my gun into bed with me. Even 'tho I had the gun beneath the blankets, the click of the hammer being pulled back sounded like a hand-clap. At that my animal jumped THROUGH the wall and outside!
I must have been about ten years old when I moved into my new room. In the culture of the time where I was living, it was the norm for a boy my age to have his own gun. I spent the following years, until I left home for WW II service, trying to get a clear safe shot at this thing, but I never did. Obviously if it could have and/or wanted to do so it could have hurt me. I did sleep every night.
I believe that I could have killed this animal had I shot it. He was too good at avoiding me. But perhaps I'm wrong. I don't know what it was. One of my gaughters says it was a "familiar" what ever that is. Had it not avoided me so well, it would have been a familiar with a 44 calibere hole in him!
His entire purpose was to harass me.