More about the Hodag

Season 5, episode 10: Come See the Hodag!

The Hodag is a fearsome critter from Rhinelander, Wisconsin, where it is a local attraction, the high school's mascot, and in the name of several local businesses.  It's fame has led to appearances in our old friend William Cox's "Fearsome Critters of the Lumberwoods," several Paul Bunyun stories, an episode of Scooby Doo, and a Harry Potter expanded universe entry on Pottermore.  (One of these did not do any research, and I'll give you one guess as to which one.)


To talk about the history of the Hodag, we first have to talk about Eugene Shepard.  He was a surveyor, timber cruiser, and renowned prankster/humorist.  He illustrated several Paul Bunyun stories, which were then widely circulated.  Later in life, he ran a resort in Rhinelander.  And he invented the Hodag.

Shepard started spreading rumors in 1893 about seeing the hodag out in the woods.  He described it as having "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 claimed it was 7 feet long, 30 inches tall, and weighed about 200 pounds.  In other descriptions, the hodag is a cross between bulldog and a dinosaur and about the size of a large dog.  It's favorite food is white bulldogs, which it eats only on Sundays.

Shepard gathered up a big posse of men to go out into the woods and kill the hodag.  The sheer number of people that went out with him showed not only how powerful the hodag was, but also how brave the people of Rhinelander were.  Unfortunately, they had to kill the beast, and they had to do it with dynamite, so they returned back to Rhinelander with a charred hide, feeling successful.  In 1896, Shepard brought the Hodag up again.  This time he claimed to have caught one alive by gathering together a bunch of bear wrestlers, who put chloroform on the ends of sticks, and poked the sticks into the hodag's cave until it passed out.

Capturing a hodag

By then, the hodag had nearly gone extinct, he explained, due to the severe lack of white bulldogs in the area.  So, of course, he put the captured Hodag on display at the Rhinelander fair grounds, where people would pay a dime to go into the hodag's dimly lit tent.  The dimly lit part was important, because if the Hodag knew that so many people were looking at it, it would become violent, and no one wanted that.  In the dark, the hodag would swing its tail and roar and people would scream and run away.  This all worked really well for Shepard until some people from the Smithsonian announced that they were coming to inspect his creature, at which point he fessed up that it was really a carved stump covered in cow hide and it's spikes were cow horns.  It moved with wires, and the growls were Shepard's sons standing behind it, making scary noises.

This does not stop the people of Rhinelander from enjoying the hodag.  Ans it shouldn't.