Oh, that? We call it the chupacabra.
The teller hunted feral hogs at night on his uncle's thousand-acre dairy farm just south of Jacksonville, Florida. They went in pairs, one person on a powerful spotlight and the other shooting, walking the cornfields until they heard pigs rooting, then lighting them up.
On one cold January night he was partnered with a friend of his father's, a Navy chief warrant officer with thirty years of service, combat experience and a lifetime of hunting behind him, the sort of man who doesn't scare easily. It was moonless and cloudy, as dark as Florida gets. They staked out a field where they'd seen fresh tracks that afternoon, heard grunting, and hit the light: five good-sized hogs.
The teller dropped the lead pig with a clean shot behind the ear and fired a few more rounds as the others fled for the tree line. Ears ringing, they bumped fists and started walking toward the downed pig.
With their first step, something screamed behind them. It was long, ragged and furious, loud and close. The two men looked at each other, equally confused and frightened. The officer swept the spotlight slowly across the open field and the trees beyond and found nothing. Then it screamed again, closer, louder and longer.
The teller compares it to the morning after you've shouted yourself hoarse at a football game, if you then screamed with everything you had for five seconds: raw, rasping and human-like, but wrong.
The officer asked for the teller's pistol at once and said they needed to leave. The teller asked about the pig. "Forget the pig." They were a mile from the truck in pitch dark. A brisk walk, scanning all around, turned into a shuffle, then a jog, then a flat-out sprint. The teller doesn't remember whether it screamed again. He only remembers focusing on not falling behind.
On the drive back they agreed it was no hog. At the house the other hunters were waiting around a bonfire. The officer stayed cool and mentioned that they'd heard a funny noise out there. The uncle said raccoons can make some strange sounds. When they explained it sounded like a person screaming, he just nodded. He'd heard it a few times himself, he said. Nobody knew what it was. The family called it the chupacabra.
The teller has hunted that farm many times since and, thankfully, never heard it again. He thinks about it every time he's out there.