During a hike in the California Wilderness, a man is startled by an earth-shattering screech echoing from a nearby ravine. What unfolds is truly unbelievable, and his reaction is bound to evoke tears. Welcome to Amazing Truth Channel.
Initially, John Chenan mistook the piercing sound for an infant’s cry. He halted, scanning his surroundings in disbelief. It seemed implausible. He was trekking approximately 2 miles away from town on the Lookout Trail, a challenging ascent up the Sierra Buttes. The notion of someone bringing a tiny baby on such a demanding hike appeared absurd. Nevertheless, the high-pitched scream persisted, a haunting combination that concluded with a raw, raspy, and ghoulish moan.
Jon dismissed the possibility of it being a baby, yet he recognized that something was in significant distress, perhaps even in danger. Despite the awareness that he might find himself in a similar state of distress soon, he resolved to investigate. For two nights in a row, the townsfolk in Downeyville, California, had been complaining about coyote activity around the town. Pets were going missing, and there was coyote scat and tracks in all areas leading to the river and the surrounding hiking trails.
As Jon reached for a boulder to hoist himself up to a higher section of the trail, he heard the sound again. In his mind’s eye, he conjured up an image of a small animal being torn apart by a coyote. There it was, that unearthly scream again, and it sounded a lot more urgent this time. He pinpointed the sound to a ravine on his right. Jon knew the area; there was a Broad Creek running down that ravine. Whatever it was, the creature was down there.
When he reached the access point that led down into the ravine, Jon stopped. From here, the trail made a heart-pounding descent into the ravine. It plummeted almost straight down for at least 100 yards before it reached level ground on the banks of the creek. There was nothing to anchor himself with on the way down – no vegetation, no rocks. It would be just him and his ability to keep his balance on the slippery ground.
Jon checked to make sure everything was securely strapped to his body. The scream pierced the air again, but this time, it was fainter, more panicked, perhaps less alive, he thought to himself. Jon’s first step was fine, so was his second, but on the third, the loose soil gave way beneath his foot, causing him to lose his balance. He swung his arms to regain his balance, fully aware that an injury to a knee or ankle out here would dump him into the deep end of a whole lot of trouble. He made it to the creek’s bank without further accidents and checked the ground ahead of him carefully. That’s when he saw them – coyote tracks all over the place.
The coyotes that made these tracks were not walking in a straight line. They were milling around, dashing into the undergrowth at the edge of the creek and then out again onto the sandy bank, hunting. Jon rounded a bend and immediately noticed two coyotes dashing in and out of the shallow water. And there it was again, the harrowing sound of a distressed animal, but it was fainter than it had been before. Instinctively, John knew that whatever it was, it was dying. The sound drove the coyotes into a frenzy; something was clearly injured or helpless, and that meant it was easy prey. They didn’t even notice Jon.
Jon slipped off his hiking backpack, then he took off his hat. He gripped the pack tightly in one hand and the hat in the other. Then he walked briskly towards the two coyotes. When they noticed him, he started swinging his pack and hat around as if he were a helicopter and shouted at the top of his voice. The coyotes backed off some, and Jon jogged up to the bank of the creek. Two rocks held down a large hessian sack; the opening had been knotted closed with a length of crude twine.
His blood froze in his veins when he realized that something was struggling inside. He scrambled over and immediately set about untying the knot. Once he’d managed to free the sack, he picked it up and took it to dry land, still careful to hold the opening shut. He had no idea what was inside of it; that was his next concern. What was the creature in the sack? It could be a ground squirrel or even a small badger. Whatever it was, struggled profusely, so it was difficult to estimate the creature’s size.
Jon found a spot where he could place the sack – an open area with enough room for him to get out of the way of potential danger when he once opened the sack. He held the sack closed with one foot and stood upright. It was now or never. When he bent down and slowly pulled the mouth of the sack open, Jon could not believe his eyes. Of all the things he imagined the creature inside the sack could be, this had never crossed his mind. It was a large domestic cat, drenched, almost frozen from the cold, and obviously on its last legs.
The cat stopped squirming around and just looked at him. It was clearly comfortable around humans, which meant it was not a stray. Someone had abandoned it. Worse, someone had tried to get rid of it in the worst way imaginable. Jon felt tears welling in his eyes; who could be so cruel? The cat’s paws were bloody; it had lost two claws, probably from struggling and scratching against the hessian. The animal was also completely wet, and it was shivering all over.
Jon pressed the cat to his chest to give it some of his body heat, pondering his next move. This cat needed to get to a vet as quickly as possible; it was on the verge of death. Jon took off his hiking coat and wrapped the weak cat inside. Then he strapped his backpack on again, slapped his hat on his head, and set out to the main road at a jog. He reached the main road an hour later; he hadn’t peeked inside the coat to see how the cat was doing; he was too afraid of what he would find.
Deep in his heart, Jon didn’t give the cat much of a chance. It was too cold, and it had been in the freezing water for who knows how long. He didn’t believe the cat would survive, but he was determined to do all he could nonetheless. Within minutes, he’d managed to flag a vehicle down. It took only a short explanation for the driver to invite him in and then make for the town at a speed that would make any cop’s eyebrows flip up.
Inside the vet’s rooms, Jon plopped the hiking coat down on the examination table. The vet carefully unwrapped it; first, he listened to the cat’s heart, then he examined the feline from head to toe. When he turned back to Jon, it was with a grim look on his face. He didn’t believe the poor tabby would recover from its ordeal and told him that the kindest thing they could do for it would be to put it out of its misery right away.
But Jon was having none of it. He offered to pay for whatever treatment the cat needed
and begged the vet to at least try. In the meantime, he reported the crime to the local authorities, who unfortunately told him that there were no cameras in the woods or even around that area. Anyone could have abandoned that poor cat, and given that the sack had been submerged for a while, there was no chance of recovering a good set of prints from the fabric.
The cat was now all alone in the world, and once it got out of the clinic, it would go straight into a shelter, that is if it ever got out. Once again, that didn’t really sit right with John. Three weeks later, he walked up the stairs of his cottage to his bedroom. When he opened the door, he smiled at the bundle in the middle of the bed. Garfield, as he had decided to call the ginger cat he had rescued from the cold and the coyotes, was curled up in the middle of the bed as if it were his own. He glanced up at Jon, started a lazy purr, and closed his eyes again. He had found his place in the world again, and this time, he was keeping it until the end of his days.
