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house shortly after receiving the call but came up empty handed. It was obvious that something had scared the trio, but it was impossible to substantiate their story without tracks or some other evidence. To make things even more puzzling, the location was much further from the usual Boggy Creek haunt. The first incident—at the Fords—occurred in the vicinity of the north fork of Boggy Creek (a.k.a. Chicken Creek), while the second incident—the Woods—occurred on Highway 71 near the south fork of the creek. Oats Street is located on the Arkansas side of Texarkana, about 10 miles north of Fouke. In those days it backed up to an area of thick trees, but still, it was much closer to the outskirts of a large city than any of the previous sightings.
    However, it was hard to completely dismiss the possibility that the “monster” had decided to venture north from the creek. The following Saturday, June 5, police received yet another call from a residence at the intersection of Oats and Washington. This time a child had reported seeing a “monster in the woods across from a group of houses in the area.” As unreliable as a child’s eyewitness “monster” account may be, it still added fuel to the fire and caused some alarm in the neighborhood.
    A more thorough search of the area, at the request of the residents, turned up some unidentified tracks at an abandoned fertilizer plant on North Oats Road. On Sunday June 6, Miller County Constable Paul Jewell and Deputy Constable Richard Haygood discovered what they described as “four-inch wide tracks” in the soft soil surrounding a large barn-like structure used for storing fertilizer bins. There were at least five visible prints, but unfortunately they could not tell if the animal’s foot had claws because of the nature of the soil. It seemed that for the time being the creature had managed to cover its tracks.
    But not for long.
    On the hot morning of Sunday, June 13, Yother Kennedy discovered a series of mysterious footprints in his freshly plowed soybean field located near the south fork of Boggy Creek. The tracks originated from the woods at one corner of the field and traveled about 150 yards before disappearing into the trees on the other side. The trackway appeared to have been made by a bipedal creature walking upright. According to an article that ran two days later in the Texarkana Gazette , the tracks measured 13.5 inches long by 4.5 inches wide with a maximum stride of 57 inches between them. Just as in the Ford incident, the animal appeared to have three toes, all about the same length. Another smaller toe imprint was observed about five inches back from the big toe, but this digit only made a faint indention in the sandy soil.
    A curious incident that occurred just prior to the track find was also reported by Kennedy: “Kennedy said he was plowing Wednesday and had stopped to work on his tractor when he heard strange noises coming from the thick undergrowth near the field. He said he got his rifle and plowed the rest of the day with it close by. Then Sunday he returned to the field to see how his beans were doing and found the tracks.”
    Several Fouke officials and citizens were initially called to the scene that Sunday morning, including Constable Ernest Walraven, Sheriff H.L. Phillips, J.E. “Smokey” Crabtree, and Willie Smith, who owned the land. The tracks were so unusual that even doubters began to wonder what was going on. Walraven, who had previously investigated the Ford incident, seemed swayed by the evidence. He told reporters: “At first I didn’t think too much of the sightings but now I do. I have never seen tracks like this and I have been in the woods all my life.”
    Sheriff Leslie Greer and the local game warden, Carl Gaylon, also investigated. Neither had ever seen animal tracks like those before, so they could not make a judgment as to whether they were authentic, only that they were indeed mysterious.
    Willie Smith weighed in on