Satellites appeared to be dropping flares?

I apologize in advance for the long post, I don’t know how to explain this in a short manner. Saturday, November 25th at 3am just outside Corvallis, Oregon I was standing on my porch looking roughly east. I was looking for meteors when a satellite appeared at about 30 degrees traveling from right to left parallel to the horizon. After about 2 seconds of visible travel, a second light, similar in size and color, appeared behind the first satellite and began arcing towards the horizon (the original Satterfield continued traveling right to left), as if ejected from the back of the satellite. The second light traveled towards the horizon at about the same speed as the original satellite. The second light grew brighter and brighter, until it wa almost the size and color of an old yellow streetlamp, before fading out. The first light faded out just as a satellite would. The activity lasted about 5 seconds total. A few seconds later, another satellite appeared and the process repeated. And again.

This continued from 3am to 4am. The active portion of the sky moved up and right at the same rate as the stars around it. As time went on, the ‘flares’ got dimmer and dimmer, as if they were getting farther away. My partner witnessed the very end of the phenomena before it faded out and went behind a tree from our view.

The next day, Sunday November 26 at 3am my partner and I both witnessed the same phenomena again, lasting for about an hour before getting so dim it was harder to see and going behind a tree. I noticed the second morning, sometimes flares would appear by themselves, and sometimes they would appear to be ejected out of a satellite. I posted on our local corvallis reddit to see if anyone else has seen it, or if anyone knew of something going on. I also looked up some satellite trackers that said there were no visible satellites from 730pm to 430am in my area. I tried to video the phenomena, but my old Samsung wouldn’t pick it up. Which is super frustrating, everyone is acting like I’m an idiot that doesn’t know what satellite flare looks like, or what Starlink looks like.

I went out this morning, Monday November 27 at 3am, and witnessed the same activity, though it seemed to me that were reduced in frequency. You can bet I’ll be out there again 12 hours from now.

I just don’t know what I’m seeing and it’s taking over my brain trying to find out. There is a small airport nearby, but there were no flashing or colored lights. It looked just like a regular satellite. There was no noise, the sky was clear and cold, not a breath of wind. The way the active area stayed in relation to the surrounding stars makes me think it is not in our atmosphere. Has anyone seen this? Recognize what’s going on? Have links or resources where I might be about to find out?