If the Wampus is hungry, he devours the prey, feathers, beak, and all. If his mood is playful, the Wampus extracts the tail fan only and releases the bird. The feathers are given to the Indians. Wampus Cats are friendly with the red men. That has been offered as one reason why Indians never have turned in a Wampus fur. Primitive trappers of the primitive areas who have caught them declare that the hide runs mostly to quills anyhow and the color is akin to a Christmas necktie.
Origin of the Wampus, on the authority of Stanley Basin mountain men, dates back to the old-fashioned beaver. It seems that a trapper’s dog surprised a beaver far from water. There was nothing for the animal to do but climb a tree. But beavers don’t climb trees. So it became a Wampus Cat.
Once lured to the bailiwick of the wicked Salmon River eagles, the quick-witted Wampus will swiftly eradicate the fowls of the air, perhaps not even sparing the wild turkeys recently planted there. A Wampus knows an eagle, but trouble is anticipated when the eagle and the turkey cross into a new species known as the Turkeagle. The Wampus could not tell them apart because he cannot spell.
The biggest puzzle brought to the attention of the Wampus Society is how to dispose of the Wampus once it has exterminated the pernicious eagle. Gorged on its favorite food and happy in the free, wild environment of the Middle Fork, the Wampus might decide to stay permanently. No predator is known that lives on Wampus meat. The Wampus might become a plague worse than the bird it is called upon to exterminate.
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