Mar 092013
 

On our way home from the airport last night at around 3AM, my wife and I spotted a strange animal scurrying away from the road in a very rural area of the Ouachita Mountains. It was about the size of a small house cat or a skunk, but it was broad — almost square from above — with the corners of the square providing locomotion at about the speed of a slow human stroll. The animal was no more than six inches high and had no obvious head or tail. It was covered in black or dark brown fur which appeared to be short and dense; there were no markings. In other words, it appeared to be a black, furry, walking square. My wife, Kathy, said that it reminded her of a monstrous, four-legged caterpillar.

Unfortunately, we were unable to photograph the creature. My wife told me that she saw an identical animal earlier last night, but about fifteen miles away. I was born and raised in Arkansas and I have lived most of my nearly fifty years here. I have a lot of experience with local animal life. If fact, a few months ago I had a flying squirrel scamper up my bare leg in our backyard late at night. However, I have never seen anything like the creature we observed last night.

Magnitude 4.7 earthquake slams Arkansas

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Feb 282011
 

An unusually strong earthquake struck near Guy, Arkansas, late Sunday night. Registering 4.7 on the Richter Scale, the tremor is the latest of literally thousands of quakes that have plagued central Arkansas in the last few years.

Some people suspect that “fracking” disposal might be the catalyst for the recent and peculiar swarm of earthquakes in that area. Natural gas drilling into the Fayetteville Shale deposits use hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, to force out methane trapped within the rock located underground. The waste water is then disposed by forcing it deep underground through high pressure injection wells.

Arkansas state geologists are currently investigating the possibility that injection wells are producing the seismic instability.