Alternate Names
Mishipeshu {Ojibwe}
Gowrow {Arkansan}
Selblatkey {Egyptian}
Physiology
The hodag is a large, shaggy, spirit creature found in the Northwoods of Wisconsin. The adult hodag averages seven feet in length, from snout to the tip of its tail. Male hodags typically weigh around 220 lbs, with females averaging about 140 lbs. The beast has a squat, frog-like head with a toothy, grinning maw, from which protrudes two long tusks. The hodag’s head is crowned with two long, bovine horns, with a ridge of sharp dorsal spines running down its muscular back to the tip of its long tail.
Artist's depiction of a "Middle-Aged" Hodag, fur darkening from green to black.
The body of the hodag is covered in shaggy fur. This fur is a vibrant, emerald green during a hodag’s youth, but grows darker as the hodag ages, eventually settling on a pitch black in the hodag’s old age. Hodag fur is especially coarse, as each hair is covered in tiny spicules. These spicules are made of verdigris (copper and copper carbonate), resulting in the green-to-black coloration of the fur. Making skin contact with hodag fur causes irritation and inflammation, similar to effect of nettles.
The eyes of the beast are either typically red or green in coloration, though rare amber-colored eyes have also been observed. Its eyesight is typically poor in bright light, but is on par with that of a wolf under moonlight.
The hodag’s four, squat legs end in wide paws and sharp claws, which it uses to dig and establish burrows. The hodag is surprisingly swift despite its short legs, owing to its compact leg muscles.
A hodag’s large lungs allow it to hold its breath for up to thirty minutes at a time. Its wide, paddle-like paws aid the hodag in swimming, making the hodag as comfortable in the water as it is on the land.
Hodags lay eggs as their primary means of reproduction, females laying a clutch between 3 and 8 eggs within their burrow. Hodag eggs hatch around 25 weeks after being laid. The female hodag is incredibly protective of her eggs, attacking anything that dares disturb them.
The hodag has a secondary, spiritual method of reproduction as well. A dead animal that had led an especially abused life can become possessed by the spirit of a hodag. A corpse possessed in this way will gradually transform into a hodag over the process of several days, coming back to life in the process (in a similar method to windigo reproduction), though cremating the corpse can prevent this transformation from completing. Hodags born this way are of an especially fierce disposition, seeking vengeance against those that wronged the animal in life.
The hodag primarily relies on its keen sense of smell to navigate and track potential prey. Its general sense of smell just below that of a cougar. The beast is drawn to the scent of copper, which it is extremely sensitive to, and can smell from miles away. Hodags consume small amounts of copper, and frequently hoard copper items within their burrows for later consumption.
The hodag’s hunger for copper is primarily as a result of its blood and hair. Hodag blood contains copper-based hemocyanin, instead of iron-based hemoglobin, as a means of transporting oxygen throughout the body. Hodag blood is colorless when deprived of oxygen, and becomes blue-green when oxygenated.
Hemocyanin (Oxygenated)
When a hodag dies its body undergoes a supernatural transmutation, turning into pure copper in a matter of hours. A piece of a hodag’s body that is cut off or separated from the hodag will likewise become copper through this same mechanism. For this reason, hodag ivory, despite being said to be of the highest quality, has never been successfully harvested, since the tusk of a hodag quickly becomes copper when separated from the creature. When the body has fully transformed, the resulting hodag-sized nugget of copper can weigh up to 6,000 lbs.
The hodag’s odd relationship to copper accounts for Wisconsin’s many deposits of high-purity copper throughout the Northwoods, deposits that led to the creation of the Old Copper Culture emerging from the Paleo-Indians. A dead hodag does not leave a fossil behind, but instead a lump of native copper. It is no coincidence that the Lynne, Crandon, Flambeau, and Reef copper deposits are all found in the heart of hodag country. Wisconsin’s biggest copper deposits are, in truth, ancient hodag graveyards.
After years of erosion and being gnawed on by herdmates, a hodag's body becomes one of the huge copper nuggets found throughout WI
Habitat
Within Wisconsin, the hodag lives throughout the northwoods of the state, dwelling near the rivers and lakes dotted throughout the region. They range from the northeasternmost shores of Lake Michigan, just north of Green Bay, to the lands along the southern shores of Lake Superior.
Wisconsinite Hodag Range & Wisconsin Copper Deposit Locations
Outside of the state, the hodag can be found in large numbers on the shores and islands along Lake Superior, and can be found in smaller numbers elsewhere throughout North America, occasionally found as far east as Maine, and as far south as Arkansas where the hodag is known as the gowrow. There is some archaeological evidence of “old world hodags”, or possibly a different but related species, that once lived in the Nile River Valley, though such Egyptian hodags appear to be extinct in the modern era.
Hodags prefer to live near bodies of water, so as to have ready access to their usual prey, sleeping during the day in their large, underground burrow complexes. Some hodags will even dig underwater tunnels connecting these burrow complexes to their favorite bodies of water.
In the winter, when the lakes that make up the hodag’s favorite hunting grounds freeze over, the hodag can use its large tusks to break through the ice, or else accesses its favorite lakes and riverbeds through its underwater access tunnels.
Diet
Much has been said about the hodag’s supposed “favorite food”, the white bulldog, which it will “only eat on Sundays”. In truth, however, the majority of its diet consists of fish, mud turtles, and water snakes. A hodag typically eats around 3% of its body weight in aquatic prey each day. Its sharp, wide teeth are perfect both for tearing through flesh and grinding apart bone and turtle shells.
While the hodag will prey upon terrestrial animals, such as oxen and the aforementioned bulldog, it does so infrequently, leading to the impression that it saves its “favorite prey” for special occasions. This behavior of hunting land-animals is more common amongst the elder hodags than it is among the juveniles.
As has been mentioned, hodags are also known to eat copper nuggets or objects, as a result of their hemocyanin blood and verdigris-spicule hair. The amount of copper that a hodag actually needs to consume is relatively low, and so the hodag frequently hoards extra copper it finds within its extensive burrow complex, to consume later in times of scarcity.
The hodag has a taste for tobacco, and can be observed consuming the plant whenever it comes across it. Nicotine has a similar effect on the hodag as it has in humans, and hodags seem drawn to the scent of tobacco much in the way a cat may be drawn to the scent of catnip.
Behavior
Hodags group together in herds, living together in large burrow complexes. Within these communal burrows, each hodag has its own individual chamber or cell, which it uses to sleep in, as well as to store its individual hoard of copper. Theft between hodags of the same herd occurs, but is relatively rare, since any hodag caught in the act will typically be driven out of the herd by the other members.
Diagram of a Hodag burrow found near Pelican Lake, Wisconsin, mapped by Brother Pierre d'Artagan, before his disappearance
Despite living as a herd, hodags do not hunt in groups. Instead, each creature ventures out individually into the wild to hunt and feed, returning to the communal burrows to rest and socialize. The hodag prefers to hunt alone, as that way nothing the hodag finds, whether food, copper, or tobacco, needs to be shared with another herdmate. The hodag hunts nocturnally, sleeping during the day.
Hodag herds are gender exclusive, being either purely male or purely female, with the exception male hatchlings, which can be found in female burrow complexes. Once every year, a male herd will leave its burrows to travel to the territory of a female herd in order to breed. Once there, the males will compete using their tusks to impress females, and the females will select their preferred mates. After mating season is over, the males will leave back to their territory, taking with them any new male hodags that had been hatched since the prior mating season. The females will return to their own burrows, eventually laying eggs that will hatch the next generation of hodags.
One of the strangest observed behaviors of the hodags is their seeming symbiosis with the misiginebigs, also known as horned serpents. One would normally assume that since the hodag and the misiginebig are both large predators that primarily live and hunt around lakes and rivers, that the two creatures would be in conflict with one another over territory and prey. Contrary to expectations, hodags and misiginebigs have been observed to not only get along with one another, but have even been seen cooperating in order to take down large predators that would pose a threat to their shared territories. The two species work together much in the same manner as allied crime families, respecting one another’s territories while banding together to prevent other competitors from encroaching.
The Misiginebig, also called the Horned Serpent or the Blue Racer
Hodag-misiginebig symbiotic behaviors may be the result of the relationship between both species and the thunderbirds. Thunderbirds are openly hostile to both hodag and misiginebig, actively trying to eradicate the two species of water predators. Some theorize that the cooperative behaviors between hodag and misiginebig may be an alliance born from their mutual hatred towards the thunderbirds.
Ojibwe pictograph of a canoe, a hodag, and two misiginebigs
As much as the thunderbirds despise the hodags, the hodags hate the thunderbirds right back. Since a hodag has no defense from a thunderbird in the sky, other than to run and seek shelter, the hodags must resort to fighting dirty, relying on sudden ambushes when the thunderbird is on the ground, or night attacks against sleeping thunderbirds. Hodags will furthermore go out of their way to raid thunderbird nests, killing eggs and hatchlings to prevent them from reaching maturity.
Woodslore
Hodag hunting is a complicated affair. Since the hodag’s body transmutes into native copper shortly after death, a hodag yields no ivory, pelt, or meat, only a vast quantity of copper. In theory, a nugget of native copper the size of a hodag would be a profitable reward for hodag hunting, but the complications that come along with transporting a transmuted hodag usually render it not worth harvesting.
Moving a chunk of copper weighing several tons is a challenge in itself, but things become more complicated due to the fact that a hodag is often found in or near the territory of its herd, and each member of that herd can smell copper from miles away. As a result, when a hunter manages to kill a hodag, the members of that hodag’s herd will be inevitably drawn towards the scent of their freshly transmuted kin. A hunter must therefore transport several tons of copper, and quickly, before being swarmed by an entire herd of vengeful hodags.
The most reliable method of hodag hunting, therefore, is to pull off a live capture. The most common methods used for live trapping are either the use of pit traps or trapping a hodag in a cave using boulders. Once the hodag has been captured, the hunter can use a rag, doused with chloroform and attached to a pole, to render the hodag unconscious from a safe distance away. After the hodag has fallen unconscious, it can be safely moved to a highly-reinforced cage. When caged, a hodag can be moved out of hodag territory, to be either shown off to spectators, or harvested for copper as the hunter sees fit. Cage selection is very important in this method of hunting. If the hunter relies on an improperly designed cage, or a cage that hasn’t been reinforced enough, the hodag can easily escape and cause carnage in its wake.
The tip of a hodag tail is valuable as a good luck charm. For this reason, some hunters simply cut the tail off of a slain hodag, and retreat before the vengeful hodag herd homes in on the location of the hodag’s copper body. This particular artifact is also quite prone to being counterfeited, of course, since shaping normal copper into something that looks like the tail of a hodag is a relatively simple feat. Given the difficulty of verifying luck charms in general, it is often impossible to vouch for the authenticity of a hodag tail unless one saw the tail removed from the beast themselves.
Hodag copper is similar to native copper in all respects except for one. It has been noted that certain creatures that display an allergy or weakness to copper, such as the windigo, react even more strongly when exposed to hodag copper. As such, bullets or blades made of the copper from a hodag’s body are of special value to those who might encounter such beings. Scholars suggest that some of the spiritual essence of the hodag, itself a spirit creature, lingers within the copper of its body, which is what makes weapons crafted of hodag copper more effective against other spiritual entities.
Many of the artifacts from the Old Copper Culture are made of hodag -copper, helping Wisconsin's earliest inhabitants to survive
Seeking measures of protection against hodags is a relatively simple feat. Traditionally, for safe passage across a lake or river, one can offer the hodag tobacco or copper in “exchange” for the right of passage. Tossing one or the other into the water will usually keep the hodag distracted and occupied long enough for travel over the water to occur.
Simpler methods have been found in more recent times, however, as it has been found that the hodag detests the scent of lemons and other citrus fruits, and is repelled by the presence of such. Certain naturalists have suggested that the hodag detests the scent of citrus due to the fact that citrus fruit smells similar to the tears of a hodag, and a hodag presumably wishes to avoid anything capable of making another one of its species shed a tear. Hodag tears are said to be orange in color, hard and crystalline, tasting and smelling faintly of lemonade. These claimed properties of hodag tears have yet to be verified, however, as no consistent means of forcing a hodag to cry has ever been recorded.
-Brother Upton Gardener, High Loremaster, Ancient Order of the Reveeting Society
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