Word spread around Butler County and beyond late last summer about an unusual report of a teenager who'd spotted a hairy, 7-foot-tall creature. And about hairs found later in the vicinity.
The story starts early one morning last summer, less than an hour before sunrise along a dark gravel road not far from the Platte River.
A 15-year-old boy was at the wheel, on his way to a driver's ed class, with his dad beside him. But Dad nodded off or had his eyes on his phone, depending on who tells the story.
The boy would say later that a big, hairy creature — maybe 7 feet tall on two legs — ran in front of the vehicle, then, just as quickly, disappeared into the trees by Skull Creek.
It happened near Linwood, a tiny town in the northeast corner of Butler County some 50 miles north of Lincoln.
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The boy and his family weren't interested in the kind of attention that could come with calling the sheriff about a possible Bigfoot sighting.
But they went back to the spot later with a friend who claimed to find a hair sample on a broken-off corn plant, or something.
"That's when they called me," said Mike Luben, a conservation officer with Nebraska Game and Parks who covers Saunders and Butler counties and helps out in Polk County.
They wondered if it could be some kind of wildlife creature, and investigating wildlife falls within his responsibility as game warden.
So he went out.
But Luben said he doesn't know anything about Bigfoots or Sasquatches, so he suggested they talk to a local guy who has a Bigfoot interest that has taken him to the Pacific Northwest to track him and who says he has footprints from such a creature.
"I thought, 'What a resource to have,'" he said.
In the meantime, word started spreading of the sighting and of hairs being tested.
Fast forward eight months to March.
"It certainly generated a lot of coffee shop conversation," Saunders County Sheriff Kevin Stukenholtz said of the report that came in third-hand to his office from a friend of the family on the condition the family's names not be made public.
Stukenholtz said no one ever brought the hair to law enforcement, and they never found anything to further an investigation.
"We're pretty much moving on," he said last week.
Luben said he never took possession of the hair sample either, opting to refer the father and son to the local who has studied Bigfoot.
Reached last week, he said they never returned the friend's calls and, as far as his friend knows, the hair never was tested.
Luben said he doesn't know what happened. While he said he wasn't questioning or criticizing the report about finding hair, he called it a long shot to go back and find hairs later.
"It's one of those, who knows," he said.
Luben said if he saw something he'd want someone to check it out. If he can, he tries to put people's minds at ease or help explain what they may have seen.
Still, he understands someone not wanting to come forward for fear of being called a goofball.
In 24 years as a game warden, Luben said, he's gotten three Bigfoot-related calls, the first about 10 years ago.
In one of the cases, someone reported hearing a Sasquatch-type cry 15 or 20 miles east of the one last summer. Luben said he went out to the site with the caller and set up trail cameras, but they didn't catch anything.
"To be honest with you, it's kind of like a mountain lion call. Most don't turn out to be mountain lions, but you never know," he said.
Asked if he has any theories on what the 15-year-old boy could have seen, Luben has just one answer.
"The only thing that would even be close was a bear on his back feet."