Legendary Critters and Mysterious Animals Part II

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I can remember my grandfather telling me as a kid while out on one of our forays into the field, about a place named "The Huey or Yuey Rock". The Huey Rock was a place where there was a hole in a rock where lived what the "Old Timers" termed a "huey bug". They said that at this hole in the rock if you would bang the rock or the surrounding ground or if you were to say into the hole, "Huey come up." The huey bug would crawl out of the entrance of the hole. What nature of insect the huey bug actually was - be it beetle, grub worm or whatever - is not known and probably will never be determined at this late date. Being that the folks who inhabited the country in earlier centuries were farmers and their farms were rather often situated in very remote places, it is not surprising that they kept and repeated a whole plethora of legends about their farm life and the animals they raised. One familiar creature to us all is the milk snake. This reptile is a member of the king snake group of snakes. They, like the black rat snake, were always considered friends of the farmer because they ate the rodents which competed with farmers by eating feed grain and seeds. By so doing the milk snakes and rat snakes, due to the decreased population of rodents, also reduced the possibility of visitations of copperheads and rattlesnakes, as they would likewise come in search of rats and mice. But the old folks used to say that the milk snake got its name because it would actually suckle the cows as they awaited the farmers to milk them. There is another snake which they called the "hoop snake". Pronounced with the Elizabethan English form of a long "u" sound (like huup), this snake was so named because it supposedly would grasp its tail in its mouth and simply roll away from an enemy when threatened much like a runaway wagon wheel. Just as with the creatures discussed in the previous article, the locals insist that this creature indeed existed. The hoop snake was not peculiar to just the Hudson Valley region as it is mentioned in folklore all over the nation. I often asked what kind of snake the hoop snake was, such as a black rat snake or black racer. Some said that it was a kind of snake in itself and others said that it was a copperhead which had this habit. The mud snake inhabits swamps and bogs from the lower Middle Atlantic States southward along the coast. Very large in size (to six feet in length), its dimensions alone offer it a deterrence against attack. It has a curious barb at the end of its tail which, as legend offers, is poisonous. This snake is alleged to stab its barb into a man and inject him with venom and poisoning the victim just as effectively as does a water moccasin's bite. It is also said that if it jabs a tree with this barb the tree will die. Within its naturally-occurring range it is also known as the hoop snake. The Old-Timers must have had some reason to believe in this just as they did the other creatures I've earlier discussed. I don't think it was just a rural joke that was played on visiting city people either - although there were plenty of these too. I suspect that someone may have witnessed a snake traveling down a steep embankment in great haste and caused by gravity and momentum it may have appeared to have been rolling or some such series of events or phenomena. The witnesses may have reported this to acquaintances who in turn passed it along to others and eventually the story managed to take on a life of its own. There is also a legend about a snake which defends itself (or attacks, depending upon who is telling the story) by coiling itself around a man and whipping him with his tail while constricting the man's waist and chest. This is thought to be a large snake like the black rat or black racer in this part of the country. In other areas it is blamed on other large snakes like the bull snake or gopher snake. Incidentally, as far as the black racer is concerned, one legend about it is that, as its name implies, it can cover a lot of ground in a short time. But it has been said that the black racer can "run" faster than a horse. While they are quick and I have seen them hurrying away from my presence, there is simply no way that they could outrun a horse which can run at 40 miles per hour. I recount the numerous times which I've explained to newcomers or visitors who are curious about what kind of snakes are indigenous to the region, that copperheads and black rat snakes will often flick their tails rapidly in dry grass or leaves and create a sound which mimics the familiar rattle of the rattlesnake. Many times I will receive looks of disdain or amusement as if I was making up a story. Even when I explain the antics of the familiar hog-nosed snake which puffs up and hisses like a cobra to scare its tormentors and when that doesn't work it simply rolls over and plays dead, more often than not those listening will return with incredulous looks as if they thought I was just pulling their leg. Yet these are all well-known behavior characteristics of these species. Then again, I often have nearly had arguments with people who don't believe that there are black bear and even rattlesnakes present in this geographic region. I once had a man call me a liar and tell me that "Everyone knows that rattlesnakes are only in the desert!". If that was so I wonder why they call them timber rattlesnakes. As far as I know there isn’t much timber out in the desert. He also chided me for giving the public false information. I fully expected him to write a letter of complaint to my superiors over the incident because he was visibly angry with me despite my insistence of veracity. Oh well. When you think of it, those people who believe that rattlesnakes are only in the desert or who don't believe that black bears inhabit the area, or who refuse to believe that snakes other than rattlesnakes can imitate the rattling-sound, are all practicing their own brand of delusion and folklore and will pass it along to others. I think, indeed it's practically self explanatory, that creatures which evoke fear in man such as reptiles and spiders, somehow have an effect on man's psychological need to provide answers about the mysterious. In other words, for those who know very little about snakes or spiders, they will create their own theories and explanations about them even though they may be totally incorrect. But for them it provides an answer and offers them a feeling that they somehow understand the creatures better. This is the same kind of mystical-thinking which many have had throughout history that created much of our mythology. Thusly, the legends about the full moon, eclipses, bats flying into your hair, and cats having the power of hypnotism, all must have arisen from this form of introspection. Naturally, others who have the same fears will listen to these explanations and it resonates with a degree of factuality simply because they "sound logical", so they are repeated again and again and before you know it, it becomes fact. For those who don't know the answers, they formulate their own answers. I imagine that some doctoral student somewhere must have studied this phenomenon in detail, but I have never read of any such report or dissertation. It would make for fascinating reading. Although the origins of folklore and the process by which they are created are of great interest to me, when I start to get too deeply involved in their genesis, the fun of learning about them begins to wear thin and fade. So enough social psychology for one day and back to the legends and folklore. I once asked an Old-Timer if they had many deer or bear in the area back when he was a young man. He said that they were pretty scarce in those days. This makes sense because by the late 1800s most of the trees in the Hudson Valley had been cut down for fuel due to the many iron blast furnaces and forges and the brick industry in Haverstraw, N.Y. which needed to be fed. Deer are a woodland animal and don't stick around after their home is gone. He then added that they used to have what he called "pig bears" when he was young. It was explained that these were little bears smaller than the usual black bears which we see today. I asked if a pig bear was just a small black bear and he insisted that it was different. He added that their hunting dogs would scare them out of their lairs and chase them while they were out hunting. It seemed to me that this animal lived in stone walls or burrows and sort of foraged around by digging and scratching for its living much as a pig grubs around for tubers and roots. This in some respects sounds more like a wolverine than any kind of bear, except that it seemed to be non-aggressive which is starkly contrasted by the wolverine's well-known reputation for being the orneriest critter anywhere in the world. It defends its territory with great ferocity and would hardly run away from a mere pack of hunting dogs as the pig bear was said to do. Wolverines are known to fight a mountain lion or grizzly bear over a fresh kill. Wolverines were never supposed to have been in this area either (but they did exist as far east as Ohio in Colonial times). Out in Michigan (the Wolverine State) the wolverine is also called by some the skunk bear because it resembles a small bear and it has a strong musky odor. Badgers bear some of these characteristics too, but not closely enough to accredit this to them either. So who knows what the pig bear was. Perhaps they were just immature black bears which had been encountered, as they are known for their desire to avoid man and dogs. Then there was a creature the old folks called the wompus. About all I can remember of what they said about it was that "it walked heavy like a woodchuck", whatever that meant. I think it must have been something like the killyloo (or killykaloo) bird which flew backwards to keep its backside cool in the Summertime or the mugwump whic