A hodag history compilation from a recent quiz we did on Facebook!

 

QUESTION:🌲What year did Eugene Shepard first discover the Hodag? 1822 / 1893 / 1900 / 1991🌲

ANSWER: Kurt Kortenhof explains in his book ‘Long Live the Hodag’ that “The Hodag first made its appearance in the autumn of 1893 near the lumbering frontier community of Rhinelander, Wisconsin…. Although a seasoned woodsmen, Shepard had never before encountered a Hodag, the beast so often spoke of in the lumber-camp bunkhouses. The sighting, however, was unmistakable. Shepard stood face to face with a 185 pound, seven-foot-long, lizard-like beast. Its head was disproportionately large for its body with two horns growing from its temples, large fangs and green eyes.”

 

 

QUESTION: 🌲In 1928, who claimed in writing that a hodags eyes are green?🌲

ANSWER: Lake Shore (Luke Sylvester) Kearney wrote in his 1928 publication, ‘The Hodag and other Tales of the Logging Camps’, that the Hodag has “glowing, green eyes.“ Found in this excerpt from Lake Shore’s The Hodag story, “Though a student of wood lore and of both prehistoric and other wild animals, Mr. Shepherd could not classify the monstrosity, which was gazing at him with glowing, green eyes and sniffing from nostrils of flaming hue.”

 

 

QUESTION:🌲What year did the first Hodag kids book debut?🌲 1974 / 1989 / 1994 / 2006

ANSWER:Caroline Arnold released ‘The Terrible Hodag’ in 1989, the first book for kids (that I know of) featuring the Hodag. Caroline followed up with ‘The Terrible Hodag and The Animal Catchers’ in 2006, the same year Happy the Hodag debuted in ‘Tales From The Trees’ as an inclusive Hodag for kids. Other friendly depictions of the Hodag have been created more recently for kids as well.