Report 116: Possible Injured Juvenile on I-84 near Boardman

In the early spring of 1995, a friend of mine and I had just finished a construction job in Vancouver  WA ,and were heading back home to Oklahoma. We left Vancouver in the late afternoon, and made our way down the highway that runs parallel to the Columbia River (I can not remember the # of the road) just after dark we aproached (what the sign said was) the Columbia River Gorge(seeing as how it was dark we did not see much). The road started to bend south a bit and we came to the first incline and in the headlights of my truck appeared this figure, at first I thought it was some animal that was crossing the road but as we got closer and the lights of the truck became more focused on it, we realized that it was not a common anima! It looked to be about three to four feet tall with the strangest red colored hair covering it's body. But the thing is, it was sitting in the road facing us with one leg straight out and the other leg out to it's right side, and it was trying to push itself up (as if it had been hit by a car). Well, I had to swerve into the other lane to avoid hitting the poor thing! All this took place in about a minute or so. My friend and I never said a word until after it was over a minute or so, I said "Charlie...did you see that?" and he replied "I was'nt going to say nothin' till you said something, but yes!  We thought right off of going back but had decided that since it was so small that mother could be near by and we both (being avid hunters )were armed but what we saw was no mule deer or bear or anything else that we had stalked in the past; so we kept driving just to be on the safe side.