The thought of preserving various legendary woods varmints in some permanent record form first came to me about thirty years ago when making a cruise of Sandy Bay Township for the late Roy S. Marston. It occurred to me then that these tales, originating chiefly in the logging camps and on the drives were a definite bit of American folk-lore, an integral part of the history of American logging and lumbering and well worth recording. So I have been collecting them for a good quarter-century.
Tall tales of adventure and hair-breadth escapes have always sprouted wherever the lumberjack has started timber operations. The logger, the North woodsman in particular, is an imaginative fellow, with an inborn fondness for practical jokery of various sorts. Hence, with the adventurous yarns there has appeared an array of woods animals frequently terrifying, sometimes vicious, sometimes merely unique, whose appearance, characteristics, habits and habitat have for long been told and re-told with a gradually increasing degree of astounding detail for the puzzlement and temporary terrorization of some camp greenhorn.
It is by no means unlikely that a number of these tales received their initial impetus through a woodman's being well startled by some odd noise, or perhaps by sighting some queer shape while travelling after sun-down. Such an experience, we've all had them, is as a rule quickly followed by a feeling of relief coupled with gratitude that our temporary panic has no witnesses. And the rest of the trip back to camp has often been employed in weaving the whole incident into a carefully-embroidered tale to be tested out at the first opportunity.
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