Why would anyone wear a fur coat in the woods when it's ninety-something degrees out?
Six or seven years before he posted, the teller was building a log cabin on his own wooded land in the North Carolina foothills, among pin oaks, shortleaf pines and dense summer undergrowth. It was a hot, humid midsummer afternoon, around one or two o'clock. He was sitting on an upturned bucket, packing a cob mixture of clay and straw into the gaps between the logs while he waited for his brother and a friend to come and help.
He got the sudden feeling he was being watched. He assumed it was the other two trying to sneak up on him for a laugh, so he kept working and pretended not to notice. Then, off to his left, he heard leaves crunching lightly, slowly getting closer. Deer often wandered by, so he wasn't alarmed. When he turned his head toward the sound, it stopped.
He stood up and looked. Years earlier he had cut a narrow lane through the brush there for deer hunting. At its edge, twenty or thirty feet away, was what looked like a person covered head to toe in fur, half hidden by leaves. He could clearly see a very broad, long shoulder and arm, and a light brown face, also with some hair on it, looking back at him through the leaves.
They looked at each other for ten or fifteen seconds. Still assuming it must be a person, he said "Hello." At that the figure shifted its weight, turned its shoulder toward him and calmly walked back the way it had come.
Puzzled and annoyed that someone was trespassing deep in his woods, he started after it. It sped up. He ran, shouting "Hey, stop!", and heard it break into a full sprint on two legs. He's a big man, it was brutally hot, and he gave up quickly.
Only then did it sink in. The figure was about six foot five or six, a little taller than he is, with long shaggy fur the colour of a golden retriever. It had looked exactly like someone in a fur suit. But nobody in their right mind wears a fur coat in someone else's woods in ninety-plus-degree heat and humidity.
He laughed at himself for even thinking the word Bigfoot. Black bears are rare in that area, and there are no brown bears. What sticks with him most is how calm it was. It seemed to have simply been watching him work, curious about what he was doing. He still can't say for certain what it was.