Whipple Creek, northwest of Ketchikan, Alaska
December 2000

Ms. L.C. reports on Dec. 11, 2000, that while five miles up Whipple Creek (ten miles northwest of Ketchikan, she experienced a power shutdown to her trailer one weekend early in December. As her lights went out, she heard a single loud scream from the forest edge fifty yards from her trailer, followed a minute later by another scream about ninety degrees to the left, still in the forest. A fourteen year old boy, Jimmy M., told me in July of 2000 he had been on the same road up Whipple Creek, only 100 yards up the road from the trailer and found, with his friend, a "Black bear track" that was "about fifteen inches long, with five toes showing." This may have been a superimposed pair of front and hind paws, as there were numerous other bear tracks about 7 inches long along the road, but it is difficult to say.

Report: Rob Alley, Ketchikan, Alaska.