Cryptozoology Comes Of Age

Long dismissed as the domain of Ufology and conspiracy theories, cryptozoology has come of age and become a legitimate science thanks to the discovery of various new animal speices previously unknown to science.

If you've read Scott Weidensaul's excellent book The Ghost With Trembling Wings (2002), you'll recall the story of Louise Emmons and the giant Peruvian rodent she discovered. But before I get to that, let me say that The Ghost With Trembling Wings isn't about ghosts at all, but about the search for cryptic or supposedly extinct species. Think thylacines, British big cats, Ivory-billed woodpeckers, Cone-billed tanagers, the resurrection of the aurochs, Night parrots, Richard Meinertzhagen and the Indian forest owlet. It begins with Weidensaul's search for Semper's warbler Leucopeza semperi, an enigmatic parulid endemic to St. Lucia, discovered in 1870 and last seen alive in 1969 (although with a trickle of post-1969 sightings, some reliable and some not so reliable). If you're interested in the hunt for cryptic species and zoological field work and its history, it is mandatory that you obtain and read this inexpensive book.
Louise Emmons is a highly distinguished, experienced mammalogist who has worked on bats, tree shrews, cats big and small, and rodents, and is also the foremost expert on the mammals of the Neotropical rainforests (she wrote the only field guide to Neotropical rainforest mammals: Emmons 1999a). On 15th June 1997, while on an expedition to the northern Vilcabamba range of Cusco, Peru, she was walking along a forest track when, lying dead on the track in front of her, she discovered a big dead rodent. Pale grey, but handsomely patterned with a white nose and lips, and with a white blaze running along the top of its head, it was over 30 cm in head and body length, and with a tail over 20 cm long. Its broad feet, prominent and curved claws, large hallux, and palms and soles covered in small tubercles indicated that it was a tree-climbing species. A large bite wound on the neck indicated that it had recently been killed by a predator, probably a Long-tailed weasel Mustela frenata.
And it was entirely new: no one had ever recorded anything like it before. In her description of the new species, Emmons (1999b) named it Cuscomys ashaninka (meaning 'mouse from Cusco, of the Ashaninka people') and showed that it was a member of Abrocomidae. This is an entirely South American group previously known only from Abrocoma Waterhouse 1837, members of which are sometimes called rat chinchillas, chinchilla rats or chinchilliones, and from the Miocene fossil Protabrocoma Kraglievich 1927. Abrocoma is known from eight species (A. bennetti, A. boliviensis, A. cinerea, A. vaccarum, A. uspallata, A. budini, A. famatina and A. schistacea), among which A. boliviensis was only recognised in 1990 and A. uspallata in 2002 (Glanz & Anderson 1990, Braun & Mares 1996, 2002). Incidentally A. bennetti has 17 pairs of ribs - more than any other rodent. Abrocoma produces midden piles, and Pleistocene rodent middens from Chile have been identified by DNA analysis as having been produced by Abrocoma (Kuch et al. 2002).

And speaking of unkown species here is a possible explanation for the Ogopogo.

Could unknown Okanagan creature be baby Ogopogo?
Kent Spencer, Canwest News ServicePublished: Monday, November 10, 2008
VANCOUVER - A TV documentary crew has added to the mystery surrounding Ogopogo by finding an unknown biological specimen in the depths of Okanagan Lake.
"I told a radio station tongue-in-cheek I thought it was the baby Ogopogo," monster-watcher Bill Steciuk of Kelowna said Monday after the History Channel completed a nine-day shoot.
"It was all curled up. The features were really hard to see. You could see a little head tucked in and a straight tail with no fins.
"It's a huge mystery. We have no idea what it is," said Steciuk, who helped organize the shooting locations.
The unidentified specimen has been shipped to the University of Guelph in Ontario for DNA tests, but Ogopogo buffs will have to wait until February to find out more, when the Monster Quest program weighs in on the legendary mega-serpent.
Ogopogo, first sighted in the 1870s, is reputed to be 12 metres long with multiple humps and a small head.
The History Channel, which had a bigger budget than previous expeditions, mounted a thermal infrared imaging camera on a helicopter for the first time. It picked up an unidentified shadow on the lake, while sonar spotted something over three metres long moving in the water.
"That's pretty big for a fish," said Steciuk.
But divers made the most interesting find in an underwater cave on the west side of Rattlesnake Island.
"I couldn't recognize it," said Steciuk. "Nor could anyone else. Maybe a new species has been found."

See
Sea Serpent
Die Vurm
Strange Sea Creatures
Chupacabra A Shunka Warakin
Cryptozology Part 1
Cryptozoology Part 2
They Walk Among Us


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Chupacabra A Shunka Warakin

A what? Well thanks to BigCityLiberal perhaps we have a solution to what the Chupacabra is. Perhaps this cryptozoological phenomena is just another name for a different cryptozoological creature. Perhaps they are one and the same. Since they are both cryptids. Perhaps the Chupacabra is a Shunka Warakin.

In the Great Plains of the American West, from at least Montana to Nebraska, there have been reports of an animal that seems to be a hyena. With a sloping back and hyena-like features, this beast was known to the Ioway Indians as the shunka warak'in. Similar creatures, with different names, were reported from the lands of other tribes. This animal was generally described as having dark fur, often black and sometimes red. The shaggy areas were distributed in a different way than on wolves. White settlers also thought they had seen this creature, and some were even mounted as trophies. Although the present wherabouts of these trophies is now unknown, one famous trophy had a picture taken of it, although it might have been a strange-looking wolf mounted by an incompetent taxidermist. Only DNA testing could settle the question.

After all the later is a supposed extinct North American Wolf Hyena hybrid as this picture shows of one shot and preserved in the 19th Century.

Shunka Warak'in

In the late 19th century, the Hutchins family moved into an area of Montana along the Madison River's West Fork, in Broadwater County. They were soon to report encounters with a mysterious canine beast known to Native Americans.

One of the descendants of the original clan was zoologist Ross Hutchins. In 1977, he would write Trails to Nature's Mysteries: The Life of a Working Naturalist. Within this book is reference to one of the most obscure creatures to grace North America's cryptozoological landscape. The following account is reproduced from that book.

One winter morning my grandfather was aroused by the barking of the dogs. He discovered that a wolflike beast of dark color was chasing my grandmother's geese. He fired his gun at the animal but missed. It ran off down the river, but several mornings later it was seen again at about dawn. It was seen several more times at the home ranch as well as at other ranches ten or fifteen miles down the valley. Whatever it was, it was a great traveler...

Those who got a good look at the beast described it as being nearly black and having high shoulders and a back that sloped downward like a hyena. Then one morning in late January, my grandfather was alerted by the dogs, and this time he was able to kill it. Just what the animal was is still an open question. After being killed, it was donated to a man named Sherwood who kept a combination grocery and museum at Henry Lake in Idaho. It was mounted and displayed there for many years. He called it ringdocus.

An Ioway Indian named Lance Foster approached Loren Coleman in 1995 and informed him of traditions existing in that tribe of an animal called a shunka warak'in ('Carrying-Off-Dogs') which cried like a human when killed. Foster's descriptions of an animal that looked something like a hyena and the existence of one in an Idaho museum are testimony that the animal killed at the Hutchins ranch was a Shunka Warak'in.

Coleman speculates that the creature may have represented a survival of a prehistoric species known as Borophagus, although my own researches into the animal makes it seem even more likely that it may belong to another prehistoric species, a creodont known as Hyaenodon montanus. H. montanus was a rather lightly built member of the Neohyaenodon subspecies

And these pictures shows the alleged Chupacabra caught in Texas this summer.

Eric Gay / AP

Phylis Canion holds the head of what she is calling a Chupacabra at her home in Cuero, Texas, Friday, Aug. 31, 2007

Creature ID'd As Coyote, Not Chupacabra

updated 8:32 a.m. MT, Fri., Nov. 2, 2007
SAN MARCOS, Texas - The results are in: The ugly, big-eared animal found this summer in southern Texas is not the mythical, bloodsucking chupacabra. It's just a plain old coyote.

Biologists at Texas State University announced Thursday night they had identified the hairless doglike creature.

Oh well.....there are lots more Chupacabra still out there.

But the Shunka Warakin is extinct. Or perhaps not....

Wolf,dog,Shunka Warakin?

Posted by Mark on February 24, 2007, 11:04 am

Did anyone ever here of the dna results on that wolf creature they shot from a helicopter in Nov 2006 in Montana,that killed 120 sheep? It was 106 lbs,& orangeish color.In the 1800's a settler in Montana shot & mounted what they called Ringdocus,the Indians called it Shunka Warakin ("carrying off dogs").I have a picture of the mount in a book I have.Anyway both storys r neat but I never read a follow up story on the dna results.Some said it could've been a wolf from the great lakes region but I never saw an orange wolf out here.Mabey a Wolf-dog X. Who knows?

Your True Tales
August 2007 - Page 6

Shunka Warakin
by James

I was eight in 1992 and went camping with my friends in his backyard. We made camp and lit a fire. We were in the tents when a shadow was cast on the side. We thought it was a dog at first and I went outside to chase it off. But it was not a dog. The most I remember is its eyes, they were red. The fur was black and reminded me of a hog. It smelled awful. Its front legs were longer than the back legs. It just stared at me and then it just walked back into the woods.

I talked to an Native friend of mine and he heard of it. My wife brought home a book called Weird Georgia and it had a picture and an article about it. The picture made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. The book called it a "wog". We Googled "wog" but didn't get much, but then we found a picture of "shunka warakin" and the hair stood up again. I live in southern Georgia and actively deer hunt, but have never seen another creature like this - and hope never too.

Cue eerie music....


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That's A Sound I Like

Ok I will accept the charge of speciesism when it comes to mosquitoes. In this case we can thank the arachnids for effectively doing what pesticides can't. And I am partial to spiders after all.

A real monster spider’s web has been found in Lake Tawakoni State Park in Texas, USA. Apparently the web, stretching 180 metres, is the result of millions of spiders working together, to the mystification of park rangers.

The web is proving effective in controlling the mosquito population. Donna Garde, park superintendent, said that “There are times you can literally hear the screech of millions of mosquitoes caught in those webs.”

Though scientists are yet to explain why, or which species, the spiders built this.

RICHARD MICHAEL PRUITT/DMN

Donna Garde, park manager at Lake Tawakoni State Park, sees tens of thousands of mosquito carcasses weighing down the webs.

Entomologist Professor John Jackman of A&M University said that similar webs were reported every couple of years. They are either created by social cobweb spiders working together, or by spiders spreading out from a central point. He commented that “until we get some samples sent to us, we really won’t know what species of spider we’re talking about”.

There is much debate amongst experts over the reasons for the web's construction, with some believing it was created by social spiders living as a colony, and others suggesting it is possibly a system of mass dispersal, with the spiders building webs in order to spread out. There is also uncertainty over the species of spider responsible, although it is known that smaller webs of an otherwise similar nature have been discovered elsewhere in the park, on another trail. It is thought that the species is likely a member of the genus Tetragnatha.

John Jackman, a professor and extension entomologist for Texas A&M University and author of "A Field Guide to the Spiders and Scorpions of Texas," said that the phenomenon is not particularly unusual and that reports are submitted to him every few years detailing similar webs. "There are a lot of folks that don't realize spiders do that," Jackman said. "Until we get some samples sent to us, we really won't know what species of spider we're talking about."

However, other experts disagree over the unusual nature of the discovery. "From what I'm hearing, it could be a once-in-a-lifetime event," said Herbert "Joe" Pase, a Texas Forest Service entomologist. "It's very, very unusual."

Norman Horner, an emeritus biology professor at Midwestern State University in Wichita Falls, has been studying spiders in Texas since 1965 and he says he's never seen anything like this. In 2002, there were reports of a massive spider web in northern British Columbia. And there have been anecdotal reports in other locations over the years.

"Social spiders," the rare exception, typically only form colonies in tropical areas across the southern hemisphere, said Dr. Horner, but they have been spotted in South Texas. After seeing pictures and learning that the webs would have been weaved in only a few weeks, Mr. Quinn decided this was probably not the work of social spiders.

Another theory is that the spiders secreted silk that lifted them into the air and landed them at this location. Dr. Horner, who has not visited the site, guessed these spiders dispersed together and landed on a windy day.

Multiple species of spiders helped weave the gargantuan spider web at Lake Tawakoni State Park, a Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist determined Friday.

But the highly unusual discovery of both frontal web and long-jawed spiders together raises more questions about just how the eye-catching phenomenon occurred, said Mike Quinn, the parks department biologist. He plans to send web and spider samples to Texas A&M University for definitive identification. The web spans an area estimated at 200 square yards. Once snowy white, the web has turned brown from the masses of mosquitoes and other bugs trapped in it.

Based on his preliminary evaluation, Mr. Quinn believes that it could only have resulted from what scientists call a “dispersal event.” Essentially, that means that baby spiders drifting in the wind all ended up in the same place somehow, for some reason.

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Chupacabra

What is it? And since she found this corpse in July why are the professionals speculating instead waiting for the forensic pathology and DNA test of this creature. Dog, fox, coyote, whatever, lets quit the 'scientific' explanations until the science is done thank you.

Phylis Canion holds the head of what she is calling a Chupacabra at her home. She found the strange looking animal dead outside her ranch and thinks it is responsible for killing many of her chickens. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

But what folks are calling a chupacabra is probably just a strange breed of dog, said veterinarian Travis Schaar of the Main Street Animal Hospital in nearby Victoria.

"I'm not going to tell you that's not a chupacabra. I just think in my opinion a chupacabra is a dog," said Schaar, who has seen Canion's find.

The "chupacabras" could have all been part of a mutated litter of dogs, or they may be a new kind of mutt, he said.

Wildlife officials say the animal is actually a very sick, grey fox that possibly has a parasite.

Phylis Canion found the corpse of a strange looking critter on her property in late July. Claiming that the animal killed numerous cats in the area and sucked the blood from her chickens for a number of years, Canion collected the blue-colored road kill off Hwy.183. Upon closer inspection, she couldn’t place a name to it.

Determined to find out the identity of her discovery, she contacted KENS-5, a CBS broadcast affiliate in San Antonio. The news station was also curious, and sent a tissue sample to Texas State University-San Marcos for DNA testing.

The Department of Biology received the remains late this summer and is currently running tests to divulge the classification of the animal in the lab’s Beckman-Coulter CEQ 8800 DNA sequencer.

“This is part of a Mexican, Caribbean and Latin-American cultural phenomenon,” said Michael Forstner, professor of biology at Texas State and facilitator of the DNA tests. “While we don’t have the skull, from the images we have we can tell you that it’s a canid, it’s in the dog family Canidae.”

The reason the department doesn’t possess the skull is because the head of the animal was removed by Canion. She placed it in her freezer to preserve it for a decorative mount on her wall, leaving DNA testing as the remaining means in which to conclusively identify the beast.

“We’ll extract the DNA and amplify it using DNA markers suitable for mammals and carnivores,” Forstner said. “When we’re done, we’ll run the results against our online database and see what it matches.”

Supposed chupacabras that have undergone testing in the past often turn out to be wild dogs, foxes or coyotes. In this case, Forstner says the department should easily be able to find a match.

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Another Croc

Another crocodile tale, except this monster turned out to be a bearded lizard. And proving once again that so called eye witness testimony is the flimsiest form of evidence, for science or justice.

Of course while relatively small the bearded lizard is commonly called a 'dragon'.

And as usual you can find out more about dragons, sea monsters and die vurm.
on my blog.

Sometimes a crocodile is just a lizard

IAN BAILEY

August 14, 2007

Vancouver -- A reported "15-foot crocodile" that drew a half-dozen police cars to a Vancouver backyard on Sunday night after panicked 911 calls from a resident turned out to fit easily into a shoe-box-sized enclosure when brought before the media yesterday.

Animal-shelter staff were looking after the bearded lizard thought to have wandered away from his owners' home.

"Sometimes they can be hard to handle, and will bite, but this guy's pretty gentle," said Paul Teichroeb, chief licence inspector for the City of Vancouver, holding up the sandy-coloured creature yesterday during a police news conference.

Police say they got a 911 call from a panicky homeowner who claimed there was a five-metre-long crocodile in his back yard.

Six officers were sent in, only to discover a 30-centimetre-long reptile called a bearded lizard.

Chief licence inspector Paul Teichroeb displays Bud a bearded dragon lizard found in a backyard on 14th Avenue.
Photograph by : Stuart Davis, Vancouver Sun

SEE:

Strange Sea Creatures

I Thought I Saw A Putty Cat

Congo's Ghosts

The Fountain Of Youth

Turning Off The Nile

I Don't Do Mornings

Nessie was an Elephant?

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Godzilla Croc

You know that urban myth about gators in the New York City sewer system....well it ain't New York and it ain't in a sewer and it's a croc not a gator.

A small crocodile called Godzik, or Little Godzilla, which escaped from its cage in southern Ukraine at the end of May, is still at large and apparently enjoying itself, an official said Friday.

The 70-centimetre (two-foot, four-inch) long Nile crocodile, which swam away during a publicity show on a beach on the Sea of Azov, is defying attempts to recapture it.

Dariel Adjiba, of the local office of the emergencies ministry, said the reptile had apparently made its home on an abandoned barge which ran aground in the shallow sea, where it could often be seen sunning itself.

AFP Photo: Close up of a nile crocodile in captivity. A small Nile crocodile called Godzik, or...

Godzik had been with a travelling circus for about a year when it escaped at Maryupol on the northern shore of the inland sea.

In the old days this kind of thing would give rise to the myth of dragons, sea monsters and die vurm.


SEE:

Strange Sea Creatures

I Thought I Saw A Putty Cat

Congo's Ghosts

The Fountain Of Youth

Turning Off The Nile

I Don't Do Mornings

Nessie was an Elephant?

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I Thought I Saw A Putty Cat

Move over Dr. Kervorkian make room for Oscar the Cat. A truly American creature ala Edgar Allen Poe.
Of course being raised amongst the demented and dying, how Poe-tic, a cat would 'sense' death it's a component of its sentience. Making it not such a strange animal.

The July 26 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine—ultra-respectable bastion of medical research—has an article about a cat, Oscar, who can (it says) tell when patients on a ward for severely demented individuals are about to die.

Oscar barely tolerates anyone on the ward who's not hours away from death, says the article. Even if they're barely conscious, brains barely registering the world anymore. But if someone's about to go?

Oscar arrives at Room 313. The door is open, and he proceeds inside. Mrs. K. is resting peacefully in her bed, her breathing steady but shallow. She is surrounded by photographs of her grandchildren and one from her wedding day. Despite these keepsakes, she is alone. Oscar jumps onto her bed and again sniffs the air. He pauses to consider the situation, and then turns around twice before curling up beside Mrs. K.

One hour passes. Oscar waits. A nurse walks into the room to check on her patient. She pauses to note Oscar's presence. Concerned, she hurriedly leaves the room and returns to her desk. She grabs Mrs. K.'s chart off the medical-records rack and begins to make phone calls.

Within a half hour the family starts to arrive. Chairs are brought into the room, where the relatives begin their vigil. The priest is called to deliver last rites. And still, Oscar has not budged, instead purring and gently nuzzling Mrs. K. A young grandson asks his mother, "What is the cat doing here?" The mother, fighting back tears, tells him, "He is here to help Grandma get to heaven." Thirty minutes later, Mrs. K. takes her last earthly breath. With this, Oscar sits up, looks around, then departs the room so quietly that the grieving family barely notices.

- Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live.

"Many family members take some solace from it. They appreciate the companionship that the cat provides for their dying loved one," said Dosa, a geriatrician and assistant professor of medicine at Brown University.

After about six months, the staff noticed Oscar would make his own rounds, just like the doctors and nurses. He‘d sniff and observe patients, then sit beside people who would wind up dying in a few hours.

Oscar is better at predicting death than the people who work there, said Dr. Joan Teno of Brown University, who treats patients at the nursing home and is an expert on care for the terminally ill

Oscar wouldn‘t stay inside the room though, so Teno thought his streak was broken. Instead, it turned out the doctor‘s prediction was roughly 10 hours too early. Sure enough, during the patient‘s final two hours, nurses told Teno that Oscar joined the woman at her bedside.

No one‘s certain if Oscar‘s behavior is scientifically significant or points to a cause. Teno wonders if the cat notices telltale scents or reads something into the behavior of the nurses who raised him.

The Black Cat

1841

by Edgar Allan Poe
(1809-1849)

I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had birds, gold fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat. This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point --and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered.

Pluto --this was the cat's name --was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house. It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the streets.

Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years, during which my general temperament and character --through the instrumentality of the Fiend Intemperance --had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my At length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as I made no scruple of maltreating the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, when by accident, or through affection, they came in my way. But my disease grew upon me --for what disease is like Alcohol! --and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and consequently somewhat peevish --even Pluto began to experience the effects of my ill temper.

One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fiber of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.

When reason returned with the morning --when I had slept off the fumes of the night's debauch --I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed.

In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost eye presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, but, as might be expected, fled in extreme terror at my approach. I had so much of my old heart left, as to be at first grieved by this evident dislike on the part of a creature which had once so loved me. But this feeling soon gave place to irritation. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the primitive impulses of the human heart --one of the indivisible primary faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable longing of the soul to vex itself --to offer violence to its own nature --to do wrong for the wrong's sake only --that urged me to continue and finally to consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning, in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a tree; --hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest remorse at my heart; --hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and because I felt it had given me no reason of offense; --hung it because I knew that in so doing I was committing a sin --a deadly sin that would so jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it --if such a thing were possible --even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most Terrible God.

Of course I would suggest you read the rest of the story as the protagonist gets his just comeuppance as I suggested here; Animal Crimes.


SEE:

Cat Carol

Chinese Fat Cat

PETA Kills Cats & Dogs

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Chupacabra In Texas?

So is this strange animal discovered in Texas the mythological Porte Rican Chupacabra, or just a naked coyote? Place your wagers.

See:

Die Vurm

Congo's Ghosts

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