arkansasjoe's Blog

Okay, I said that Frank Wall's site was the only ozark howler site I trusted, but I just found another local site at the RoundRock Journal, with some people making comments there about their firsthand sightings.  I'd have to say that's another good on the ground site.

Nancy, a reader there, makes the following report of an ozark howler in Oregon County, Missouri:

"Don’t be too fast to scoff. A friend of mine got up very early in the morning, about 4:30 am, and when he went outside he noticed his livestock were very frightened and had huddled in a cluster in the corner of the fence by his house. He had some binoculars, so he took a look in the direction from which they had run. He said what he saw looked like a big, black panther. He quickly changed his mind when he began walking down to his field and saw the thing running along his fence line. He said it had very long ears, or horns, and was black with thick fur. It had a long tail like a cat, but looked like a mix between a cat and a dog. It was broad and about as big as a great dane, and it had eerie reddish eyes that gave him chills. There is no reason for him to make up such a story, and he was very shaken up after the sighting. This was in Oregon County, MO."

Like I said, I don't know if the creature is real.  The point is that the ozark howler has been talked about by us who live here for decades, if not longer.

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.

My mood: pretty awake

Well I have to say that this is a first for me, but I'm trying a lot of firsts this Spring, given that its been about 9 months now since my retirement and they say use it or lose it, so I'm trying this blog thing, and I like the name Experience Project, because that's what I want to share, my experience, not my opinion, or something like that. This last election I want to talk about - 2008, because I was a lifelong Democrat, of the Arkansas kind, not like Hillary Clinton up in New York. Down here, Democrats stand for tradition, but I have to say that I just found that our Senator Mark Pryor, who was up for re-election last year, he just wasn't the sort that I thought I could trust. He has been involved in some back room deals, you know what I mean. So, there was Rebecca Kennedy, and I never thought I would vote for anyone with that last name, but it happened, for sure. She just seemed like a breath of fresh air to me. Anyone else with opinions about our state politics in Arkansas, I'd sure like to hear from you.