Nightime roadside encounter near Orangeville witnessed in Ontario, Canada

Open Map

We were driving down a two lane highway that had no streetlights. I seen something on the road ahead of us. I told the driver to slow down, and I looked out the right side passenger door window into a field to scan for deer coming from the right field toward the road, thinking it was deer on the road. I seen open fields with sparse trees, fog in the fields, backed by dense pine forest. At that point I was able to see all this detail because of the bright moonlight. I didn't see any deer in the field or in the ditch on the right side of the road. All of a sudden the car slowed down and jolted me forward, drawing my attention back to what was on the road in front of us. I commented to the driver about her heavy foot and hitting a deer that we had seen a mile away. She say's "it's not a deer" which made me focus on the animal moving to the left side of the road. What I saw looked like a large male baboon moving like a rabbit on the two front legs then back legs, rump is down, move to the edge of the road sit down and look to it's left in our general direction. I say, slow right down and shine the headlights on it. She does the opposite we are as far to the right of the highway as we could be and we are about to roll on by this thing sitting there without confirming what it was. Not while I'm on point. I grab the wheel with my left hand and crank the wheel hard to the left now we are heading straight for it and the ditch. This animal looks at us, looks straight ahead like its going to jump the ditch then it looked or flinched to the right because I thought we were going to hit it for sure if it crossed the highway. And then darkness took over and we stopped with a hard jolt. When I grabbed the wheel the driver hit the brakes and cranked the wheel hard to the right we come to a complete stop perfectly straightened out one foot from the left shoulder and within 5 feet of the animal. The driver turns the car off and everything goes black. My first reaction was, what the bleep, the driver says 'take your hands off the wheel right now', and I do pleading my case. I say "hurry up and turn the high beams on before it takes off".All of a sudden she turns the interior light on and flashes all our eyes and now what ever that thing is, it can see us instead of the headlights shinning in it's eyes. Finally she turns the interior out and the low beams on. There it is, about 10 to 15 feet away and it looks like it's crawling unnaturally low to the asphalt, away from the hood of the car. It looked to the right like it was, exit stage right, ditch. But it turned to the left, head low ,moved to the very edge of the ash fault, gather it's back end above the feet and legs and looked like it was going to jump the ditch again. But it doesn't, it does the rabbit move two front then two back move and it stops sits and looks to the left at us. It's about one foot away from the edge of the ash fault in a sitting crouched position, head up, on gravel shoulder. I tell driver hit the high beams and lets roll by. She starts heading back to the other lane and I grab the wheel again and straiten it out and we rolled by within two feet of the animal, very slow. It would not look at us when we rolled by, just then the driver blocked my view out her side window. I beeped the horn and looked out the driver side back door window, it was not there. We drove back to the other lane and stopped , I can see a vehicles' lights coming towards us down the highway but pretty far away. We discuss going back to investigate but decided not to and then discussed what we saw and then left. These are details of what I saw: pointed head, no tail, no butt pad, and the hair is all short except on it's face, and its even shorter the closer to the eyes, mouth and nose. The hair looks an even length, 1 inch and so. It's hair looked mainly light brown, with grey undertones with flecks of black. Forward looking eyes like a predator. What I saw of the feet, they didn't look that long or big, and wide. Little ears, a crease between head shoulders, little or no neck, head sits forward, flat face, lean body, from side view about 200 pounds. Height in this crouch sitting position 3 to 3 and a half feet tall. The only thing massive or muscular looking was it's shoulders or upper back which was kind of humped. It's spine was interesting because when it looked like it was going to jump the ditch, it's spine looked straight, it held it's head high and erect. I could see the spine protruding. When it did not flee it relaxed because it's spine was not protruding, the head was not erect but sat forward and you could see a skin crease in the space between the head and shoulders. The crease looked like upside down smile where the neck should be. It's body language was not saying explode into motion anymore it was looking more relaxed, stand or squat it's ground and wait. I noticed that it's rear end never touched the ground at any point..