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Who dat say Hodag? This week’s Alphabeasts entry is a product of the great American tradition of hoaxes, exaggerations and balderdash. The Hodag got it’s start in 1893 when a Wisconsin timberman named Eugene Shepard reported discovering a beast with “”the head of a frog, the grinning face of a giant elephant, thick short legs set off by huge claws, the back of a dinosaur, and a long tail with spears at the end”. He subsequently gathered up a posse of townspeople and they proceeded to blow the damned thing up, apparently using dynamite to accomplish this end. A photograph of the animal’s scattered, charred remains was circulated around the media outlets of the day with a quote claiming that the Hodag had gone extinct after it’s primary food source, all white bulldogs, had dried up.

Fortunately for us all, in 1896 Shepard managed to locate and capture another Hodag, this time entrapping the creature alive! According to his report of the capture, he and several bear wrestlers put a chloroform soaked cloth on the end of a long stick and then introduced that stick into the mouth of a cave where the Hodag resided. Shepard displayed his horribly horned and clawed creature at the Oneida County Fair and, afterwards, at a shanty built outside his home in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. It seems he had rigged up a series of wires to the beast and was able to make it move in a way that was convincing enough to terrify onlookers with it’s apparent vitality. Soon the Hodag was making national news and a group of scientists from The Smithsonian Institute actually announced a trip to Rhinelander to inspect and catalogue Shepard’s incredible animal. This put Eugene Shepard in a difficult position and he quickly recanted and announced that the whole thing had been a hoax. Not that this put an end to the Hodag which continues to this day to enjoy a celebrity status in Rhinelander where sightings of the beast are still frequent.

Please do visit the larger Alphabeasts site to see 100's of amazing drawings by all kinds of great artists: [link]

Description
Who dat say Hodag? This week’s Alphabeasts entry is a product of the great American tradition of hoaxes, exaggerations and balderdash. The Hodag got it’s start in 1893 when a Wisconsin timberman named Eugene Shepard reported discovering a beast with “”the head of a frog, the grinning face of a giant elephant, thick short legs set off by huge claws, the back of a dinosaur, and a long tail with spears at the end”. He subsequently gathered up a posse of townspeople and they proceeded to blow the damned thing up, apparently using dynamite to accomplish this end. A photograph of the animal’s scattered, charred remains was circulated around the media outlets of the day with a quote claiming that the Hodag had gone extinct after it’s primary food source, all white bulldogs, had dried up.

Fortunately for us all, in 1896 Shepard managed to locate and capture another Hodag, this time entrapping the creature alive! According to his report of the capture, he and several bear wrestlers put a chloroform soaked cloth on the end of a long stick and then introduced that stick into the mouth of a cave where the Hodag resided. Shepard displayed his horribly horned and clawed creature at the Oneida County Fair and, afterwards, at a shanty built outside his home in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. It seems he had rigged up a series of wires to the beast and was able to make it move in a way that was convincing enough to terrify onlookers with it’s apparent vitality. Soon the Hodag was making national news and a group of scientists from The Smithsonian Institute actually announced a trip to Rhinelander to inspect and catalogue Shepard’s incredible animal. This put Eugene Shepard in a difficult position and he quickly recanted and announced that the whole thing had been a hoax. Not that this put an end to the Hodag which continues to this day to enjoy a celebrity status in Rhinelander where sightings of the beast are still frequent.

Please do visit the larger Alphabeasts site to see 100's of amazing drawings by all kinds of great artists: [link]