The Legend of the Hodag
The origin of the Hodag seems to vary depending on who you are asking.In the northern Wisconsin homeland of the Ojibwa people, where pine trees touch the heavens and lakes are as numerous as stars, there arose one day - from the ashes of a burnt ox - a horrifying creature called the Hodag. In the 1800s it was, when immigrant French, Irish and Scandinavian shanty boys worked alongside Paul Bunyan hauling timber from the forest with oxen and chain. At 300 pounds, the Hodag was a fearsome creature with fiery, stinking breath, two fierce horns, four clawed feet and a row of dangerous spikes spanning from head to tail. Brandishing sharp fangs, the beast devoured bulldogs and oxen and terrorized lumberjacks deep in the woods.
Well, that's a long story... To quote the Rhinelander (WI) locals: It's the fiercest, strangest, most frightening monster ever to set razor-sharp claws on this earth, that's all. The Hodag made its first appearance in 1896. Gene Shepard, Rhinelander pioneer and timber cruiser, snapped its picture just before the beast sprang at him from a white pine log. The Hodag is over 7 feet long and 30 inches tall. It has bristly hair and spikes along its backbone and tail. The vise-like jaws will crush anything unlucky enough to get near the Hodag's menacing tusks and needle-sharp claws. You can relax a little (but only a little) because the Hodag chooses to devour white bulldogs exclusively (and only on Sundays).
No matter who you listen to, the city of Rhinelander adopted the Hodag as its city symbol and mascot of its school system. The UW-Madison Ultimate team began using the mascot sometime in early 1990s, and since then many a jersey have been designed with various depictions of the beast. For a better overview of the Hodag, take a peak at Kurt Daniel Kortenhof's book "Long Live The Hodag!"