This was about 2000, I was ten and my brother was three. We lived in quite a rural home, one of those houses basically in the middle of nowhere, and had to be driven into a nearby town to go to school every day. This place was seriously remote, which might explain why no one else saw what we saw.
It was our summer vacation and it was about noon, our parents had gone away somewhere for the day and had left me to take care of my brother, David. They were very easy going and I had previously babysat the kids of other people in the nearby town I just talked about, so they knew I was responsible. I was sitting in our backyard reading a book and watching David play with his trucks, pretending to crash them into each other and throwing them around - he was always so violent with those toys. I had just started reading a new chapter when David started screaming. ‘Look Arwie’ - My name is Arnold, ‘Arnie’ for short, David hadn’t gotten that whole talking and clear pronunciation thing down yet - ‘It’s a Girwaffe!’ He was pointing excitedly at our father’s tool shed, his toy trucks laying solemnly in the green grass. I looked up from my book and gasped. Our father’s tool shed wasn’t far away at all, only about forty feet away from where David was standing. I know what I saw.
Standing on four legs next to the tool shed was something big. His assertion of it being a Giraffe wasn’t far off in terms of size. I’d seen Giraffes at the zoo and this thing was almost the exact same size, but other than that it was completely different. It had small hairs running down its light grey, wrinkly neck. Atop its head was a large, sapphire crest. It had a beak that was nearly the same length as its neck, and wings protruding from its arms, they almost looked like scissors when it was on the ground. I blinked, it was still there. I rubbed my eyes, it was still there. It was real.
David started running towards the giant thing with his arms outstretched as if he wanted to give it a hug. I started running after him but tripped over one of his damned trucks. I looked up just in time to see the bird snap its giant and powerful beak at him, the movement making an audible woosh sound. David got frightened and turned around but it was too late, that thing grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and hoisted him up. I scrambled to my feet and tried to run to him, but it was too late. With one powerful flap of its wings, the bird took off with my little brother still in its mouth. I tried futilely to grab his arms, but he was out of reach. While that thing carried him away, I heard his screams: ‘Arwie! Arwie!’
The police arrived with my parents, everyone in my family was crying. The state started a manhunt to find my little brother, after three months they found a bloodied sneaker a few hundred miles away. Nothing else.
I’m thirty-two now and still can’t quite rationalize that incident in my mind. I’ve researched the beast I saw that summer afternoon and only one creature fits the bill completely. This is where I’m gonna sound crazy, here it goes: I believe that what I saw that summer afternoon, was an Ahzdarchid Pterosaur, more specifically, Quetzalcoatlus Northropi. The only explanation that I can come up with is that I somehow encountered an animal that has been extinct for the past 60 million years. I know it sounds crazy, but that Pterosaur is the only animal that looked like what I saw. That was what killed my brother.
I can still hear his screams.