Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods Read online

  In the lumberwoods of Maine and up into New Brunswick and Quebec, the shagamaw can be found scavenging along the outskirts of trailer parks and lumber camps. It will eat anything and everything, including a man’s right hand, but it usually restricts itself to garbage and unattended pets. A “toteroad” is an old term for an access road that leads to a camp, and there’s always plenty to eat along a toteroad, especially if you eat garbage.

  The shagamaw’s visage is fearsome, with a goat’s features on a man’s skull; about the mass and volume of a Jersey cow, but its feet are what are truly monstrous.

  I have the honor of being the first to describe accurately and scientifically the toteroad shagamaw. I encountered it while seeking another creature: the legendary bear-foot boy. I had come across a set of bear tracks outside the town of Arrowsic, Maine, and I was following them in pursuit of the boy. There was always the chance that I might be stalking a real bear, of course, in which case I was ready. I had my bear-proof suit and my bear spray and a harpoon gun. No bear would get the jump on me.

  For three miles I followed the trail before I realized that I had things all wrong; the trail I’d been following was not a trail of bear tracks after all; these were moose tracks.

  I was embarrassed at having made such an elementary blunder as to mistake hooves for claws. Furthermore, to be on the track of a creature as fearsome as a moose when I was prepared for a bear, well, it was a dangerous situation.

  Returning to camp, I swapped my bear-proof suit for a moose-proof suit, packed up some moose spray, and attached a new harpoon to my harpoon gun. I set off into the woods again and picked up the trail where I’d left it. I followed the moose tracks, feeling secure in my certainty that I was ready for any moose I might stumble across.

  Three miles in I realized that I was right the first time: These were bear tracks. I rubbed my eyes, or at least the one remaining to me. “Has the world gone mad . . . or have I?” I whispered to myself.

  Back at camp once more, I quickly changed into my bear-proof suit. I took the bear spray, and the vorpal bear harpoon, although just to be safe I brought the moose spray and the extra harpoon, too. If bear or moose were out there, I would be ready. (I had already forgotten all about the bear-foot boy, which is fairly typical of my attention span. Perhaps the bear-foot boy is just a myth; or perhaps I misheard something.)

  I followed those bear tracks all day, and was horrified to find them change from a bear to a moose and from a moose to a bear. “Perhaps,” I said to myself, “this is a moose who transforms into a bear when the moon is full, or every three miles or so.” I was ready, however, for a weremoosebear. At least I thought I was ready.

  Dear reader, the secret of the toteroad shagamaw is terrible to reveal. It has the forefeet of a bear; it has the hindfeet of a moose. It walks upright, as we do, and when its moose feet begin to tire, it pivots around its hips and walks on its forefeet, like a man walking on his hands.

  Thus does the shagamaw surpise its prey! In 1987, Richard Hempelweiss thought he was hunting moose; the shagamaw ate him. In 1961, Constance Jackson thought she was on the trail of the bear that had stolen her honey jar collection; the shagamaw ate her. Preparing to fight a bear and a moose at the same time is next to impossible, and anyone preparing to fight both a bear and a moose will never be able to prepare simultaneously to fight a shagamaw.

  Witnessing the shagamaw switch from one set of feet to the other is a strangely disconcerting experience. Weaker minds have been driven mad by the sight. Indeed, when I finally caught up with the shagamaw, and there in a clearing I watched its transformation, I came close to passing out.

  In an instant, the beast was upon me, and tore my right hand out by the root. Confused, unprepared, very nearly literally disarmed, I must have appeared easy pickings for the vicious toteroad shagamaw. How overconfidently it danced around me on alternating pairs of feet!

  But I possessed two things the shagamaw did not expect. One was a spare mechanical hand, which I had acquired from the daughter of the mayor of Kitchener, to attach to my bleeding stump. The other was a set of items I carried concealed behind my hunting gear: a rod and reel, a box of fishing tackle, and a bucket hat with hooks and lures threaded through it.

  The shagamaw had come prepared to murder and consume a hunter. But it could not have foreseen that I was not just a hunter but also a fly fisherman.

  I escaped to hunt, and fish, again another day. For the shagamaw was unprepared.

  Wapaloosie

  (Adorabilis arborealis)

  Harmless and adorable, the wapaloosie scarcely appears deserving of the name “fearsome creature.” And yet this little rodent is indirectly responsible for the Hoquiam massacre of 1993, the worst disaster in the history of the state of Washington since the injuring of Gavrilo Princip.

  The wapaloosie feeds exclusively on the “canopy fungus” that grows at or near the tops of the trees in its native habitat in the Pacific Northwest. A spike at the end of its tail helps anchor the Wapaloosie during a particularly precarious climb. But few climbs are precarious for this creature, as there is no more skilled or fanatical climber in the animal kingdom. It lives a completely arboreal existence and knows no joy other than ascending trees in search of the fungus that makes up its diet. “Even a monkey falls out of a tree sometimes,” sages say; but the wapaloosie never.

  One October, in 1993, local entrepreneur Martina Kasprowicz found a wapaloosie feeding high in her backyard. Kasprowicz felt protective of canopy fungi, due to an old but unforgotten schoolgirl crush; with bird shot she gunned the wapaloosie down.

  Not wanting to let its carcass go to waste, but well aware that wapaloosie flesh is too sour to eat, Kasprowicz, on a whim, skinned it. Its hide was velvety and soft, and she had one of the local taxidermist-tailors fashion it into a pair of gloves.

  You may not know much about the history and fashion of gloves, but refined persons always have a pair on hand, ready to slap boorish passersby in the face and call them to a duel. Kasprowicz’s gloves were of such high quality that she could have challenged the King of Denmark to a duel, or the monarch of any other country of equal or lesser size. They were also warm, and waterproof. Their only drawback, she noted, was that she couldn’t wear them hunting, as they were too thick to fit in her shotgun’s trigger guard.

  Kasprowicz was, as I have said, an entrepreneur, and she smelled a profit. One crisp October afternoon she headed out into the nearby lumberwoods, a shotgun cradled in her arm. Before evening fell, Kasprowicz had scored a sackful of wapaloosim (the correct plural). Making gloves from the creatures’ skins required more technical skill than Kasprowicz possessed, but she was able to skin the wapaloosim and fashion their skins into simple scarves, which she took to the church bazaar that weekend.

  Seventy-three scarves she brought to the bazaar, and seventy-three scarves she sold in the first few hours. The entire Hoquiam chapter of the Birdwatcher’s Fellowship Society found them so enticing they adopted the scarf as part of their official uniform. Pastor Jethroson bought two: one for himself and one to bring to his sweetheart. Monica Greenbaum said she would wear hers proudly when she led the afternoon nature walk.

  While the simple townsfolk, preening in their new scarves, went off with Monica Greenbaum to admire the foliage, Kasprowicz headed home and busied herself around the house. Donning her gloves, she went outside to rake leaves, but no sooner did she take a rake in hand than something startling happened. As the gloves touched the wood handle, they leaped off Martina Kasprowicz’s hands and scampered up the shaft. She tried touching the gloves to an ax handle, a wooden chair, and finally to a tall fir tree: Each time the gloves would wriggle and inch their way up the wood. At the final test they disappeared up the side of the tree, climbing their way into the high red leaves. Kasprowicz was utterly charmed. She wondered if the scarves she had sold would work the same way. And then a shadow passed over her face.

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bsp; It was just a suspicion, but she drove back to the woods beside the church. She called out, softly at first, for the Birdwatcher’s Fellowship Society. She called out for the kind neighbors who had bought her scarves. She followed the trail of the nature walkers, and perhaps she felt a little sick with worry or anticipation. Only a slight echo answered her call, a slight echo and the distant sound of creaking.

  The first person she caught up with was, predictably enough, Stumpy Monaserro. He was hanging from a tree, still wearing his wapaloosie scarf tied tight around his neck. One end of the scarf was still trying to inch its way up the tree, though Stumpy’s weight kept it from making much progress. The efforts of his scarf had hanged him as surely as a thief at the gallows. His body swung back and forth, creaking. A few steps more and Kasprowicz saw the whole lot of them, strangled, dangling from the trees like Christmas ornaments, their scarves vainly attempting to ascend the trunks. The lighter among them were high up and almost out of sight, the heavier barely off the ground. Forty-three people, including the entire Hoquiam chapter of the Birdwatcher’s Fellowship Society, died in those woods. Seven more of the seventy-three were hanged that day in separate incidents before word got around.

  Cactus Cat

  (Wampus bibulus)

  The cactus cat belongs to the genus of animals known as wampus cats. It is said that all wampus cats are originally descended from beavers. A beaver was once cornered (scientists say) by a hungry wolverine, and there was nothing left for the beaver to do but climb a tree. But beavers cannot climb trees. Therefore, the beaver became a wampus cat, a wild feline with a ball at the end of its tail.

  Wampus cats later evolved in different ways to suit their native habitat. The cactus cat, of course, has adapted to the deserts of the American Southwest, where its spiny body blends in with the local cacti.

  The name Carlos Gutierrez will forever be linked with that of the cactus cat, for it is he who discovered, in 1852, the secret of why the cactus cat screeches at night. Wandering through the desert at night in search of moon shadows, Gutierrez saw a cactus cat slashing a cactus tree with its long claws, as the creature was known to do; but it did not drink the sap that oozed out of the gashes. Instead, it left the cactus flowing. Under the bright moonlight the cat’s tracks were easily visible in the sand, so Gutierrez had no difficulty following as the cat went to cactus after cactus, slashing each one in turn and letting the sap run.

  Eventually, the cat reached a cactus that had already been slashed. The sap that flowed from the gashes had thickened, like syrup, and clung to the cactus’s spines. Gutierrez watched as the cactus cat approached the plant and licked up its thick, congealed ichor. After greedily lapping up every bit, the cat began to tremble. The needles that coated the cactus cat’s body stood erect. The creature rolled back and forth in the sand before leaping up and issuing forth a scream so terrifying Gutierrez’s hat flew off.

  The cat screamed and ran in circles, finally racing over the horizon. “I am curious,” said Gutierrez, “to learn what that substance is.”

  With the eye of science, we can now see that the sap, left for weeks to dry in the New Mexico sun, ferments into something part catnip and part feline mescal—that strong, maddening liquor of the Mexican borderlands. The cactus cat travels in a great circle, slashing some cactus trees to prepare them, while lapping up the fermented sap from others. The cactus cat is a territorial creature, and each one has its own rounds. Each one screams in the night.

  The sap has no such effect on humans, any more than catnip does. But what every human must concede is that it tastes good on pancakes—an admirable substitute for maple syrup, which was hard to get in New Mexico Territory. Gutierrez discovered this and began slipping into the desert by day, and collecting the running sap before the noturnal cactus cat could awaken and come back for it. Gutierrez’s Patented Flapjack Syrup and Vitality Tonic (as he called it) became a local sensation.

  But the cat was not pleased. It could follow Gutierrez’s tracks as easily as Gutierrez had followed its own, and it well knew that a man was pilfering its cactus sap.

  In the evening hours, the cat skulked on the edges of town. Rarely had a cactus cat come this close to civilization, or to what passed for civilization in New Mexico Territory in 1852, and the townsfolk became worried. They said it seemed to be looking at people’s boots as they passed by, as though seeking a particular pair. A pair that it recognized from the tracks around its cactus trees.

  Gutierrez was too busy counting his money to know he was in danger. Early one morning as he strolled around the outskirts of the desert, dreaming of an empire based on syrup substitutes, the cactus cat flashed by. Its spiky tail, with the spiky ball on the end, whirled around Gutierrez so quickly that he barely registered it. The cat flew off into the desert, and Gutierrez, a little unnerved, hastened back into town. He stopped at his favorite saloon and, as he so often did of late, ordered a shortstack of pancakes, with plenty of Gutierrez’s Patented Flapjack Syrup and Vitality Tonic.

  It was not until he began drinking his orange juice that he noticed something was wrong: The orange juice was passing right through his body and staining his shirt. Gutierrez ripped open his shirt and found that his abdomen was riddled with a thousand tiny holes. The orange juice seeped right through them, dribbling along his belly. As he gasped in amazement, the juice squirted out with sudden force, like a sprinkler. Only then did Gutierrez realize what the cat had done to him with its terrible tail. By the time he hit the floor he was already dead.

  For the cactus cats, the damage had been done, though. As word got around that congealed sap from their cactus trees was the secret ingredient in Gutierrez’s syrup, more and more people began tapping cactus trees. And so the cactus cat was driven further and further into the desert, where the cactus trees still grow succulent and tall. There in the wilderness, you can still hear them scream.

  Squonk

  (Theristes lachrymosus)

  In the wilds of the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania lurks the squonk. Its wrinkly skin is covered in warts and hangs from its body like a badly tailored suit. Its face, shaped like a rat’s hindquarters with a pig’s nose, is covered in warts. And its rheumy eyes weep constant tears.

  It has yellowing, crooked tusks, but its most fearsome aspect is its misery. Most misery could scarcely be called fearsome, but the misery of the squonk is contagious.

  The squonk is one of the last animals to evade capture. Hunting squonk does not sound difficult in theory, for the puddles of tears it leaves behind mark its trail. But in practice, to chase the squonk is impossible. As it scurries, trees and bushes bend aside to avoid contact with its hideous, warty skin, only to snap back after it passes. The hunter will never get close enough to get off a decent shot.

  I sought the squonk myself, in the summer of ’97. My sometimes nemesis and sometimes rival Jean-Paul Wentling had vowed to be the first to catch a squonk, and I had vowed to bag one before him. We pretended it was a friendly genteel rivalry, but I hated Wentling with all my shriveled Jarvik heart, and I would have murdered him gladly if not for the provisions of state and federal law.

  Wentling and I had both been nominated for the Nobel Prize in cryptozoology after the war. You will notice I possess no Nobel Prize. We had both fallen in love with the Queen of Bakuba. You will perceive that “Prince of Bakuba” has never been among my innumerable titles. In short, Wentling had defeated me at every turn, and I swore an oath by my one good eye and by this mummified hand of St. Maximus the Confessor that this time I would get the best of him.

  The grave, they say, has never turned its back on an opponent; instead, we all turn our backs on the grave. Well, I vowed never to turn my back on Wentling. I wasn’t even sure what that meant, but my dander was up, and I may have been speaking in tongues. I really hated him.

  But Wentling was a clever opponent, and while I built snares (that refused to come in contact with the squonk�
�s nasty feet) and dug pits (that simply spat out again any squonks that fell in), Wentling had found himself a ratty old burlap sack, too old and ragged to care if it touched squonkmeat. He filled the sack with a baby’s cries, with the sloshing of drowning kittens, and with the crashing of the 1929 stock market. Armed with nothing else, he sought the squonk.

  It took him weeks of rooting through mud and burrfields, but Wentling finally worked his way close enough to a squonk that its gnarled cauliflower ears, clogged with wax and hair, could nevertheless make out the sounds rattling around inside that sack. Misery loves company, and to a squonk these sounds were irresistible. Wentling opened the sack, letting the carefully collected calliope of sound escape, and the squonk ran in. When he sealed the bag with a twist, the only sound was the sound of the squonk weeping.

  It wept because it had been caught, of course; but it also wept because it was aware of its own hideousness and abjection. It wept because it would never know love (squonk breed through binary fission). It wept because its culture was inane and because someday it would die.

  My hat is off to Wentling here; it was cleverly done. But Wentling being Wentling, he could not accept the victory with good graces. Still covered with filth and forest goo, he hastened to my large but unpretentious estate. I had only recently returned from a hard, futile day of squonk hunting, and the last thing I wanted was to hear the triumphant crowing of my deadliest rival, but, being a gentleman after a fashion, I saw Wentling into my study. There, beneath trophies of luckier hunts—the mounted Sasquatch head; the sciopod sock; the sealed opaque container that holds a basilisk eye—I met a smirking Jean-Paul Wentling.