Get it Straight On the Ozark Howler | arkansasjoe's Blog

Something I've got to get off my chest is people who say they know about what it's like to live here in Arkansas, when they never have even visited.  They preach at us about how things ought to be without really understanding how they have been.  They love to talk about our "folkways", as they condescend to us, insult us.

The Ozark Howler is a prime example of that.  People love to talk about the ozark howler who clearly don't know what they're talking about.

On the one hand, there are these kids who try to draw pictures of the howler using their graphics programs, for their video games or something, and they draw it like a panther, skinny, or a lynx, short.  If they'd listened to the stories, they'd know that the ozark howler is not supposed to be skinny or short - it's not even supposed to be a cat, but these "experts" keep on saying it is, probably that's just because what their imagination can handle, I guess.

On the other hand, there are "cryptozoologists" - whatever that is.  They're self-appointed experts in the ozark howler.  Some talk about Atlantis, and others talk about bigfoot, which speaks volumes about their credibility.  They say that the ozark howler is not a bona fide "cryptid".  (Cryptid is their word for an animal they don't know anything about, but talk a lot about anyway).  One of these outside experts - never set foot here as far as I can see, says that a college student invented the ozark howler back in the 1990s.

If this guy had ever done his research, he wouldn't have written such foolishness.  People in Arkansas know that the ozark howler has been a part of our "folkways" (local stories) for generations.  I can say that means ever since my grandad was a kid, from personal experience, because it was my grandad who told us ozark howler stories when we were camping out as kids.

Now, I'm not one of those people who will pretend to have seen something when he hasn't.  I haven't seen the ozark howler.  Don't know if it's real or not.

To me, that's not the point.  What's important to me is that the stories about the ozark howler are real.  It bugs me that some people from out of state can go online in their little blogs and internet user groups and talk about how I never heard the stories my grandad and dad told me when I was a kid, and that I've just been tricked by some college kid.  It's insulting.

Have they not read any of our Arkansas history?  Do they not know about the local baseball team, The Naturals, that has the ozark howler as its mascot?  Here's a quote from www.erickarlan.com/arkansas.html for them:

The Naturals organization, however, has claimed Strike is the Ozark Howler of local folklore, long believed to lurk in the nearby mountain brush.

"That's part of the fun of bringing folklore into baseball and pop culture," says Edelstein. "We can bring stories of the past into popular culture, and teach people who are new to the area in a fun and different way."

The only online source on the ozark howler I've found that I think I can trust is Frank Wall from on down the road here.  At least he's actually spent some time up in the hills here, instead of some office in Ohio or Seattle or something, thinking he can understand the world through a computer screen.