What do you think?

A man was out squirrel hunting in the Ozarks; he killed a squirrel and out of the woods rushed an animal trying to grab the squirrel. So the hunter shot that thing too. Hard to believe? Here are the photographs of the thing, which some people feel has some banding on the body.

As you can see from the dates on the images, the photographs are from October 2006. The location is Ozark, Arkansas, west of Russellville about 45 miles. A similar animal was spotted around Hector. Hector is a tiny hamlet in the Ozark Mountains just about 20 miles north and slightly east of Russellville.

By strange coincidence, the person who forwarded the photographs to our informant is the niece of local fiction writer Charles Gramlich, who wrote a 2002 novel, Cold in the Light, about some bizarre creatures set in the Ozark Mountains. The book is partially based on some of the real background of the area, of course.

The local game warden, known only by the name Ben, went out to check on this animal, and he thought it was a coy-dog, a cross between a dog and a coyote. He said it had dog feet and a coyote mouth. It was "completely eat up with the mange."

The warden added the detail that this thing is the same color of the supposedly "Ozark monster." Nothing else was mentioned about "what" Ozark monster. But see the drawing at the end of this posting, following the photos.

Click on image for full-size version

Click on image for full-size version

Click on image for full-size version

Click on image for full-size version

What is this Ozark Mystery? Is it nothing but another diseased-canid-as-cryptid incident?

Meanwhile, if that wasn’t intriguing enough, how about the following drawing of another creature seen but not identified in middle America?

Thanks to Cryptomundo correspondent Kelly Freeman.