Daleyza

I was house sitting my grandparents ranch in between madera and chowchilla towards the base of the foothills leading up to the sierra nevadas.

there is a creek/slough that runs along the back of the property that separates the neighbors property and my grandparents. It is thicket ed with bamboo and has always been a favorite fishing spot of mine. It was late afternoon and I decided to go give it a shot for the first time since water had come back through. I grabbed my fishing poles and hopped on the golf cart and started driving parallel to the slough where our huge pasture meets the beginning of the heavy bamboo thicket.

Coming up on a curve where the slough bends I made the curve and immediately slammed on the breaks and saw some sort of canid still almost as if it was a deer caught in headlights, it stood there and seemed to take note of me but not flee.

Almost as if it was not threatened by my presence.

It was hunched forward in stature almost like a hyena but not quite, It had wiry dark grey hair and walked in kind of a slinking motion, with its back off the floor I'm estimating about 5 to 5 and a half feet off the ground. It surveyed the area for a couple more seconds and slowly disappeared into the bamboo thick. I was perplexed as to what the hell this thing could be as the only known canids in my area are foxes and coyotes. And I had never seen anything like It before.

I became increasingly interested in what I saw and couldn't find much of anything on undiscovered canids sightings in California. But I did find a picture online of whats known as the shunka warakin that has a striking resemblance to what I saw that day. From what ive seen My best guess is that it was some sort of hyena-k9 hybrid.