Legend of the Sidehill Wampus

Here in the Hanchett household, we have many legends.  Annie Long-Bangs is by far the scariest (to me).  She lives in a cave in the mountains and has never cut her long hair, which hangs down over her eyes.  She also has nails that are long like claws and when my brother Chad was camping with the cub scouts, she came out of her lair in the middle of the night and put long, deep scratches down the side of the bus while they were asleep.  They even saw her silhouette in the moonlight.  I've never verified the story as an adult, but the memory of a four year old never lies. 

We are also UFO believers.  When Jeff was in the Coast Guard, he spent seven months on a boat out in the middle of the ocean off of South America looking for drug lords.  Scary enough on it's own, but add to it strange, silent, floating lights in the middle of a dark and stormy night and you add a whole new dimension of eeriness. 

And we also pass on the story of the Sidehill Wampus.  This one is new to me, but he's legend among Jeff and his brothers.  He's like Bigfoot, only with one long leg and one short leg to better walk the side of the mountain.  And he's scary fast, so if you see him on the side of the hill, run if you dare, but it's already too late.

Well, apparently we've bred the Sidehill Wampus.

 

 

That's right- he crawls on one long leg and one short knee and is scary fast in an attack.  He even bites.  My shoulder is still recovering.

 

 

He's less hairy than I had imagined, although he does have a beard.

 

And he's not afraid of wildfires.

Apparently the Sidehill Whampus is also closely related to the chimpanzee- he screams and grunts and has only one thing which he asks for by name: the banana.

 

So next time you're out in the mountains, listen closely, and if you hear the screaming and grunting, stay on level ground and pray that we're not in the campsite next to you.