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A few years ago several of us arranged with Mark Green and Keith Tyler in Talladega County Alabama to spend three days and two nights on their hunting group’s large lease in the mountains just a few miles NW of Sylacauga. I pulled my small camper to the lease on Thursday, and Keith led me to the selected camp site. The rest of the group arrived on Friday. The site was near the base of a mountain, and it adjoined an old, abandoned open- pit rock quarry which was now a small lake, ringed by large trees and brush. When the rock was being removed, the quarriers left a section of the bedrock intact to form a dam on the down-slope side of the mountain. The spillway of the dam had been sloped and trenched slightly by machinery. There was a thin flow of water over the dam. There was a cleared camp site on each side of the spillway. The better camp site was on the south side of the spillway. A good sized area had been leveled a little, and had been covered with crushed rock. The area was large enough for a few tents or small RV’s. The far side of that area was lined with trees, and there was a steep, tree covered drop-off into a small creek along that side. That creek itself looked like a small swamp, as the beaver had dammed it not far downstream. I chose to set up my camper a few feet from the drop-off with the door and awning facing the dam, spillway and the campsite on the other side of them. After placing and leveling it, I walked around it and noticed a well worn trail down the steep incline to the creek. Since the camp sites were often used by hunting club members and their families, I didn’t give it much more thought. (I had looked closely at the trail at first, but saw no tracks of any kind.) During the walk-around, I noticed that the ends of two limbs on a sweet gum tree were close to the back corner of the camper. I realized the limbs would brush against the camper if there was any wind at all, so I used a machete to cut them off at the tree truck and threw them down the slope and off to the side of the trail. After setting up my gear, I cooked a good meal and ate. Mark and Keith drove down and we talked a good while. After they left I sat outside for about an hour listening to the owls in the creek bottom and to the coyotes up on the mountains. I was dead tired from the long drive and the work of setting up my camp, so I went inside, hit the bed and was out like a cheap light bulb. About 2:00 I had to get up and go outside. It was a clear, still night and I could not hear a sound of any kind, I went back to bed and zonked out again. An hour or so before day break, I awoke to the sounds of something loudly scraping against the upper part of my camper. Still half asleep I thought, “Dang it, I knew I should have cut off those sweet gum limbs!” When my sleepy brain remembered that I HAD cut off those limbs, I became fully alert. I sat upright, slipped on my boots, and reached for a flash light. Then I clearly heard the sounds of fast bipedal footstep in the rocks beside the camper that were moving quickly past the hitch end, and going parallel to the dam’s overflow channel that entered the heavily wooded creek bottoms. By the time I got outside with the flash light I saw nothing moving, saw no eye shine and heard nothing moving in the creek bottoms. I stood listening for some time, and then sat outside in a camp chair a little while. Not a sound, so I went back to the bed and slept until dawn. I fixed my breakfast, ate and put on my hiking clothes and gear. About mid-morning some of the other began to arrive as Keith led them to the site. After the meeting and greetings, three of the folks and I began hiking along a creek hollow a mile or so from the camps. Beautiful country and we were able to follow an old road alongside the creek. At one location, I saw what appeared to be an overhang cave on the side of a bluff. Two of us climbed the foot of the bluff and entered the cave. That’s where if found the two old ax handled I mentioned in an earlier post. We then returned to the camp site. By that time the rest of the folks had arrived. Before dark everyone had eaten and all were sitting around a campfire socializing. The campfire was only a few yards from my trailer. After a few hours of listening, I told the group good night, and I went to bed. The weather was a little warm, and three windows were open on my camper. The volume and tone of a fellow doing most of the talking was not conductive to sleeping, so I closed the windows on the rear and side nearest the orator. I need to describe my camper. It is simply a six feet by 12 feet commercial trailer that I had custom built. It is tough and has good ground clearance. I had the factory to insulate it and panel the inside walls. The roof is galvanized metal and the exterior is painted metal over metal wall framing. After sun down, the temperature dropped noticeably. In a short time the metal on some part of the camper contracted and made a loud pop. (I was used to hearing that, and paid no attention to it.) Someone at the camp fire spoke loudly to tell me that a rock had hit my camper. I opened the window and told them what had made the noise. Some insisted the camper had been hit by a rock, but I told them to forget about it and I would check the next morning. The next morning I got up and made a big pot of coffee. Some of the others came over to share the coffee. One of them asked if I had checked to see if a rock had hit the camper, and when I told him I had not, he and Mike McLain (a good and honorable man and close friend who passed away just a few years later) walked around the camper but found no evidence of damage. One of them mentioned that the rock might have hit on the roof and wanted to borrow the short ladder that I used to put up the awning. Of course, I told them that it was OK. By that time some of the others were up and about and came over for coffee. In a few minutes Mike and the other person (which I think was Keith, but not certain of that) walked up to me, both with a strange look on their faces, and Mike said, “Mr. Tal, you need to come look at something.” A little puzzled, I followed them, as did the others, to the back side of the camper near the taillight end. They had the ladder leaning against the camper, and Mike suggested I climb up and look on the roof. When I did, I saw a large rock on roof, about two feet from the back side. I looked a few seconds, laughed, called them both “jerks” and started back down. Mike put his hand on my boots and said, “Wait Mr. Tal, we really didn’t do that!” Mike then turned to the others who were standing around listening, and asked if any of them had put a rock on top of my trailer. All of them said no they had not, and someone said, “We told last night a rock hit his trailer.” I had told them about the scraping noise I had heard early Friday morning, but was convinced whatever made the noise just brushing the side of the trailer in walking past it. Suddenly, the hair on my neck seemed to stand up. I went back up the ladder, leaned over to look closely. When I did, I know the hair on my neck and arms stood up because I saw that the rock (which actually weighs nine and one half pounds) had been set down and pushed across the roof about one foot. During that movement, the weight of the rock and its rough surface cut straight-line gouges through the galvanized coating and exposed the subsurface metal. That part of the roof was about seven and one half foot off the ground. I asked Mike to get his camera and photograph the rock and the abraded galvanized coating before anyone else went up to look at the situation. Mike did that, and later posted the photos on the Alabama Bigfoot web site.