56 Degrees

Jim was out checking the cattle. A large herd that he oversaw was almost feral in nature. They didn’t come around humans much, but they did come around especially during the winter when the ranch hands would put out hay and alfalfa for them. It was well into spring and the temperature would be rising to where grass and hay would start growing again. There wasn’t much permafrost on this island due to the surrounding waters of the Gulf of Alaska. The Gulf always stayed above freezing but not by much. It was too cold to go swimming year-round.

The pond that was on the ranch would freeze up though. The three-acre pond was large, and, in the wintertime, you could walk over it no problem. Come springtime the pond would melt, and the cows would have somewhere to get water when they needed it without us having to make sure they always had water. It was rough in the winter keeping their water fresh and unfrozen.

Jim was on the 4-wheeler riding around the property. He had gone to the other side of the pond where one of the heifers had been standing all day. When he got there, her legs were stuck on the edge of the pond. It was like the pond had thawed like it normally does, she had gone to get some water and it refroze. He grabbed a chisel from the toolbox and started working to get her legs free. After an hour of working on the ice, she finally was free. But why was the pond still this frozen? The ice should be thawing out and too soft to walk on without falling in. Jim took a few steps out on the ice to test it. It was clearly strong enough to support his weight. This was odd, however. He went back to the barn and grabbed Tom.

He explained to Tom what was going on. Tom not believing Jim had to go to the pond and check it out for himself. When they arrived at the spot where Jim had freed the cow, the ice had already filled back in where it had been chiseled. In utter disbelief, Tom, and Jim both walked onto the ice. It just didn’t make sense. Here we are in April way above freezing for many days, and the ice is as hard as it would be in December. They pulled a tractor with a drilling rig on it and pulled it onto the ice. They started drilling through the ice to see how thick it was.

As they drilled into the ice, they became confused. They were more than a foot deep and still had not gotten to water. This pond never froze more than a foot and a half and the entire pond at its deepest was only 5 feet deep. Then the earth started to shake. The area was used to earthquakes, but this felt stronger than normal. The ice broke right in the center of the pond, and we could see what looked like tentacles coming out of the ice. They were a deep blue in color. Then this shriek came out as it whipped a tentacle grabbed the tractor. Tom was seat belted in the tractor and was now 30 feet in the air. This creature had done this with ease and threw the tractor away from the pond. As it landed and rolled several times, Jim hurried over to it to check on Tom. Then just as quickly as it broke and the tentacles came out, it went back together, and the spot where Tom had been drilling filled back in with Ice. Or what appeared to be ice.

Tom crawled out with blood dripping down his face where he had hit his head. He told Jim that he was ok but that he needed to sit down for a moment. Jim grabbed his first aid kit and went to wrapping up Tom’s head. What had they just witnessed? As they looked at each other wondering what they were going to do about this. They knew if they tried to explain to someone what they just witnessed that they would be thrown in the looney bin.

They sat there and talked about how where they going to get this recorded, but they had to somehow get this thing to react. But how without putting their lives in danger. They also didn’t know how much danger they were in just being near the pond. As they were discussing what to do, a wood frog jumped nearby. Jim quickly grabbed it held onto it for a few minutes to allow it to get to a warmer temperature. With it being a cold-blooded creature it wouldn’t be warm if he just threw it onto the pond.

After holding on to it, he threw out as far as he could onto the pond. The pond grumbled, a single tentacle reached out grabbed the tiny frog, and pulled it under what would be the surface. Somehow this thing could either sense pressure or heat. Jim went and grabbed a torch and his tongs from the shop. As he returned Tom was finally coming to his senses and asked what Jim was doing. The torch was to heat up a rock and perform a test to see if the creature responded to pressure or if it was the heat that triggered the creature.

He took a rock and hurled it onto the “pond”. He waited a moment, and nothing appeared or did anything. While he was waiting, he was heating up a rock with the torch. He then tossed it onto the pond and instantly the creature screamed and flipped to rock towards him. He dodged the rock just as it hurled past his head. Just as he had thought the heat is what was causing it to react as it could sense it.

This thing whatever it is did not like extreme heat but how could we get enough heat to cover a 3-acre pond to destroy this thing. They couldn’t just leave it as it would be extremely difficult to keep the livestock away from it. Many questions remained about this creature. How did it get there, where did it come from and how in the heck does it get sent back to where it came from?

Jim and Tom had been thinking and contemplating for hours on how to get rid of it. What if they could lure it into the ocean? Not knowing how big this thing is, how would they do that? Being just a mile to the ocean they should be able to get this thing there somehow. Luring it with food did not seem possible, but what if the heat was the trick. It was imitating ice for a reason.

Jim grabbed the flame thrower from the barn. It was a tool they typically used to kill weeds and start small fires with. He lit it up on the opposite side of the ocean to try and push it that way. As he started heating up the ground it started moving and he could tell it was now agitated.

The edges of it were moving in and its tentacles were now very visible and moving wildly in the air. It pulled away from Jim and started moving in the direction of the ocean. As Jim started walking through the pond that now had no water in it, just this huge creature with tentacles flailing around, he began to wonder how he was going to keep this thing moving. It looked like a huge Octopus standing on eight tentacles.

It had to be 20 feet tall, and its tentacles were insanely large. Jim turned the heat up on the torch and it was spraying far out in front of him. He didn’t want to get within reach of it but wanted it to feel the heat. They were now out of the pond and still moving in the right direction. Jim yelled at Tom to bring him another bottle of propane. He could feel this one getting low. Just as he got the words out it started to sputter. What would happen now if it stopped. This thing was already angry, and he knew if the heat stopped that it could turn back on him. But he kept pushing with what he did have. Here came Tom as quickly as he could with the propane tank on the four-wheeler. He stopped about 30 feet ahead of me to the right out of the major heat source though. No sooner did he get the propane tank off the four-wheeler, the creature grabbed it and hurled it at Jim. Jim dove out of the way, but it still landed on his legs crushing them.

Tom grabbed the rig from Jim connected the new tank and continued pushing it to the ocean. They were almost there, and Tom was hoping that once he got it there it would disappear into the ocean. As they reached the bank, it stopped screaming and reached for the cold waters of the ocean. It then quickly disappeared into the ocean waters. Whatever it was Tom was glad to see it gone.

Tom ran back to check on Jim and rush him to the hospital. It would take Jim 6 months to recover from his injuries. While Jim had several broken bones, it wasn’t anything he would not fully recover from.

The next spring Tom and Jim were enjoying dinner out on the deck. Jim had mentioned to Tom that the pond was still frozen. Even though it was 56 degrees outside and had been in the 50s all week. They looked at each other and remembered the events of last spring. They both said at the same time, “Not again!”. About that time, a tentacle came out of the ice, grabbed a cow, and pulled it under the ice. As they looked at each other in horror, they grabbed what was left of their food, and decided today was not the day they were messing with this thing again. It would just have to wait for another day if at all.

As they woke up the next morning, Tom and Jim set out to the fence in the pond with about a 50-foot buffer between the edge of the pond and the fence. They were hoping if they could starve it, then it would stop coming back. All that did though was once a week it would come out of the pond move to the fence line, grab a cow, and drag it back to the pond. For now, they would just have to live with it and hope that this was all it did. And maybe someday they could figure out how to rid the pond and their lives of this creature.

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