STORY #1
The calling of cattle filled the winteral night air. In the weeks prior, and for some unknown reasons, the farmer had lost about four cows and one massive bull.
He's still trying to comprehend who or what could take down a 500-pound animal. Handling a massive bull is no easy task. These things are really aggressive, built like tanks, and could easily kill a person without even trying.
He thought of large grizzlies, but if it was a bear, cow remains would been strewn everywhere on the ground or perhaps buried somewhere in the woods since bears are known to hide their kills.
It would have been easy to see the tracks of the animal responsible if it had snowed again. Unfortunately, there are only small patches of snow left and the grass outside wouldn't leave any imprints.
Now that he thought about it, he didn't see any of the occasional wildlife around, such as bobcats, common black bears, and coyotes. It's like they vanished without a trace, including the prey they eat... Strange.
It's a good thing for Sammy, though. The fewer predators there are, the fewer problems he has to deal with but it's still weird. It's that one particular feeling that he couldn't quite shake off.
The predators are gone, that's one thing, but something is still not quite right here, and the songbirds that he would usually hear every morning would only hear them occasionally.
Tonight, it's no different. It's quiet besides the booming yawns of cows and the whine of the cold wind.
Every time Sammy came out, the cows would behave strangely, as if they were highly alert. He watches Animal Planet all the time and recognizes when prey animals sense danger, but what they are sensing is what Sammy has been asking himself.
Inside the barn, Sammy raps a blue bandit around the cow's back hoof so that it can get better. At first, she was hurt when he started working, but by the sounds she was making tells him that shes relieved of serious pain.
He taps the wrapped hoof and lets go of the cow. He opens a door located on the left side of the barn and watches her walk down a metal fence corridor towards him.
He closes the door and then dips his hands in a bucket of water to wash away the dirt. He digs into his pockets, pulls out a big cigar and lights it.
He picked up a lit lantern that washed him in a gold hue and
sat down on a chair. Through one of the main doors of the barn, he could see blue light forming behind the tall, reaching pines. Like florescent, blue liquid pouring into the sky as the darker blues and purples retreated. It was beautiful.
There was a sudden breeze blowing from behind the barn, making it groan with old age and turning the atmosphere colder as the wind seeped between the cracks in the wood.
The open land that he is on is surrounded by woodlands, only broken by a stretch of asphalt with a white ribbon in the middle to his far left, past his house.
Sammy inhaled and as the tip of his cigar turned yellow, a sudden bellow from one of his cows made him flinch! Almost making him drop his cigar.
He went outside to investigate what was going on. The cows were clustering together in the middle of their enclosure,
bumping into one another, their hooves crunching on brown, plumps of dirty snow.
