The Shadow on Route 100: A Pennsylvania Driver's Unsettling Dawn Encounter

Imagine, if you will, the quiet predawn hours on a Pennsylvania highway. It’s just past 4:30 a.m. on Route 100, somewhere in Washington Township, Lehigh County, and the world is still largely asleep. But not for Cody. No, for Cody, that particular morning took a sharp, unexpected turn into the bizarre, an encounter that truly, deeply rattled him. He saw something, you see, something utterly inexplicable.

Now, we often hear about bears in Pennsylvania; they’re a familiar, if sometimes startling, sight in many areas. And indeed, a number of recent bear sightings have been noted around the Lehigh Valley. So, naturally, one might assume a large, dark shape on the road would be a bear. But Cody, he’s convinced, absolutely convinced, this was not. “This was not a bear,” he insisted, a sentiment that hangs in the air, thick with mystery.

What then, pray tell, did he see? He described a creature, undoubtedly substantial, “big and bulky,” but its movements… ah, there’s the rub. While it moved on all fours, its gait wasn't the lumbering shuffle of a bear. Instead, it possessed a “fast, loping run.” You could say, in truth, it was too graceful, too swift for the typical ursine wanderer.

And here’s where the confusion, the true intrigue, really sets in. It was far too large to be any common coyote or fox, yet its speed and the way it hugged the ground defied the very notion of a bear. “Too quickly and too low to the ground to be a bear,” Cody recounted, the memory clearly etched into his mind. It simply didn't fit. Not the size, not the speed, not the strange, almost unsettling cadence of its movement.

So, we're left to wonder, aren't we? What was this enigmatic beast that darted across Route 100 in the stillness of a November morning? Was it a known creature, merely acting in an unfamiliar way? Or perhaps something else entirely, something wilder, more primal, lurking just beyond the edge of our understanding? Cody drove on, surely, but the image, that perplexing silhouette, well, that's likely staying with him for a very long time indeed. And for once, we're right there with him, scratching our heads.