Several years ago, I saw something cross River Road in Muscle Shoals after dark and it has had me wondering even to this day as to what it was. I was going west on River Road at the time when I saw something completely black with a very long tail in comparison to it's body cross the road ahead of me. It moved so swiftly that I was amazed at how it seemed to only touch the ground two or three times before it disappeared into the woods on the side of the road and was gone. The animal was only about 45 or 50 yards ahead of me and in my headlights I was able to get a pretty good look at it in the brief time that I saw it. The main thing that told me that it was a large cat was the way it held it's long tail in a horizontal position as it ran. At first I was telling myself that I'd just seen a very large black lab run across the road but I've never seen a Lab anywhere near the size or speed of what I saw cross the road. I looked in the Times Daily for several months to see if there were any more sighting reports or if there was a news article reporting the escape of someones exotic cat in the area but saw nothing. The animal was seen only once and I have not seen it again since.