I had a very interesting experience at work the other night. A resident of the adult foster-care group-home in which I work the overnight shift came to me excitedly telling me about seeing a smallish mountain lion in the front yard at the end of the fence line. This resident is a man I’ll call “Randy”. He told me that while he was having a smoke on the porch, he had heard a skittering sound in the snow. When he looked to see what it was, he saw an animal running along beside the fence. When it stopped moving at the end, he saw that it had a long tail and he was certain that it was a mountain lion. He did not see any more because he got scared and ran back into the house.

Now, we jokingly like to say that Randy is “like the atoms in the universe” in that he makes up everything. So, although this house is remote and surrounded by woodlands where these animals certainly exist, I assumed this was another of Randy’s confabulations and refrained from running outside to see it for myself.

So, several hours later at around 4:30 a.m., I am going out the front door carrying a bag of garbage bound for a dumpster that sits across the driveway. It is dark. The house is silent and all the residents are asleep.

As I step off the porch I hear a sound like an animal skittering across the snow. I look toward the sound and see a creature the size of a large dog running along the fence line. I cannot make it out clearly because it is behind a tree when it gets to the end of the fence where it stops. I shift my position in order to see it better. That’s when I clearly see that it possesses a long rope-like tail. It could not be a lynx or a bobcat. It could not be a dog. It could only be a smallish mountain lion. I did not see any more because I got scared and ran back inside the house.

What is so striking to me about the experience is how precisely it duplicated the story told to me by Randy several hours before. Hearing something running on the snow; seeing the animal stop at the end of the fence; realizing what it was upon seeing it’s tail. What are the odds? A more likely explanation would be that Randy’s story had planted a suggestion in my mind and that led to me somehow hallucinating the same exact thing later that night.

Except that I have never hallucinated anything in my entire life. Sure, it was dark out and the creature moved fast so I could almost allow that I might have imagined it.

Almost.

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”

Robertson Davies