THE NEW-YORK TRIBUNE — MARCH 21, 1922
VICIOUS HOPPING HORNED HODAG HUNTED IN VAN CORTLANDT WILDS ♢ Twenty Zoologists Beat Swamps for Quill-Snouted Barbed-Tailed ‘Monster’ That Chases Small Boys and Is Kin to Famous South American Iguana
Twenty amateur zoologists, under the leadership of Professor MacNeil Weber, formerly of the University of Minnesota, who lives at 2925 Creston Avenue, the Bronx, beat the woods of Van Cortlandt Park all day Sunday in an effort to capture a horned hodag, of which Professor Weber declares but few specimens survive, and which, being a hybrid of unclassified origin, does not appear in scientific works on zoology.
According to the hodag enthusiasts, there is only one authentic specimen in America. It was killed by a lumberjack in the employ of the Shevlin Lumber Company twenty years ago and is one of the prized possessions of the Northwestern Lumbermen’s Association. Late in the autumn of 1920 and again in the spring of 1921 boy scouts encamped in dense woods of the park reported having been pursued by a creature apparently about four feet long with four horns on its snout and a succession of spines extending down its back to and over a portion of the tail. Latter reports of the presence or such a creature were received from other sources, all of them agreeing in general description.
Professor Weber describes the hodag as having a scaly body, somewhat resembling in shape that of a large lizard.
