Gyascutus

A hiker climbing Mount Mansfield can still take the Wampahoofus Trail to the summit, a path named for an animal that never drew a breath. The grade is punishing, loose scree shifting underfoot, spruce closing the light down to a green dusk, and somewhere in the folklore of this mountain a creature is said to have moved along exactly this pitch without ever slowing. The Gyascutus was built for the sidehill and for nothing else. Its legs on one flank had grown short while the legs on the other had grown long, so that its belly rode level even as the ground fell away beneath it, and it could trot around a mountain at a clip no ordinary beast could hope to match.

That was the whole of its genius, and the whole of its doom. A left-leaning Gyascutus, its stunted legs on the uphill side, could only circle a peak counterclockwise. A right-leaning one went the other way. Neither could turn around. Set the animal on a course and the mountain itself decided where it would go, round and round the same slope, cropping whatever grew there, never once able to double back. On a still morning it grazed the incline the way a cow works a pasture, its long downhill legs bracing, its short uphill legs barely reaching, the tilt of its body the only sign that anything about it was strange.

The trouble came when it tried to reverse. A Gyascutus that got itself turned with the long legs on the uphill side had a moment of terrible imbalance, and then it went over, tumbling and bawling to the bottom of the mountain, where it usually died. Put one on a flat meadow and the outcome was slower but no kinder. Unable to compensate for legs that no longer matched the land, it simply walked in a circle until it starved. That is the plain fact at the center of the legend. A creature perfectly suited to one narrow thing is helpless the instant the world stops cooperating.

It came into being not in any deep antiquity but in the lumber camps of Vermont and Maine in the years just before the Civil War, conjured after supper when the day’s work was done and a new man had joined the crew. The old hands would describe the Gyascutus with the sober conviction they reserved for their finest inventions, and the greenhorn’s growing belief was the entire point. The animal collected names the way it collected slopes. In some valleys it was the wampahoofus, in others the sidehill gouger or the side-hill winder, and the folklorist Henry Tryon, gathering these tales into his collection Fearsome Critters, gave it the mock-scientific title Membriinequales declivitatis, the unequal-limbed thing of the hillside. The joke wanted a Latin name to sound respectable, so it got one.

Tryon also preserved the story of how the beast reached the rest of the country. As Bill Ericsson of North Haven, Maine, told it, the New England gouger population had grown too thick and the food had run short, so a pair set out to find new ground, one animal short-legged on the left and one short-legged on the right. On the hillsides they managed fine. On the flats, where either one alone would have bogged down and circled to death, they leaned their long legs together and shuffled across the level country like two drunks propping each other up on the walk home from town. In this way they crossed the central states and founded the gouger colonies that folklore insists still hold the western mountains.

The creature did not stay in the camps. Humorous notices of it appeared in newspapers through the 1840s, and to be sent off on the “hunt for the Gyascutus” became a stock phrase for any fool’s errand. In 1845 a pair of Yankees turned the legend into a traveling swindle. They filled a darkened hall with paying customers, let a set of hooves peek from beneath a curtain on the stage, and promised the crowd a sample of the animal’s voice. A prod at the curtain brought a monstrous wailing and a great crashing and thrashing from behind it. Then the showman shouted that the Gyascutus had broken loose and that everyone should run for their lives. In the stampede for the doors the two men vanished with the takings, and by the next town they had somehow recaptured their beast and were ready to sell tickets again.

Its powers were exactly two, and both were narrow. It could hold a hillside no other animal could hold, and it could move across broken high country at speed while staying nearly level and nearly invisible against the tilted ground. Everything else was weakness. It could not climb straight up or straight down, could not turn without risking a fatal roll, and could not survive on flat land at all. Nobody living claims to have seen one, which is the surest sign of a well-made lie. The Gyascutus was never meant to be found. It was meant to send someone looking.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Gyascutus?

The Gyascutus is a fearsome critter from North American lumberjack folklore, a large four-legged hillside animal whose legs on one side of its body are much shorter than those on the other. It was invented in the logging camps of Vermont and Maine in the mid-19th century as a tall tale told to fool new workers.

Why does the Gyascutus have legs of different lengths?

The Gyascutus has short legs on one side and long legs on the other so it can stand level while walking across a steep slope. This lets it circle a mountain quickly in one direction, but it also means the animal cannot turn around and is doomed if it reaches flat ground.

Is the Gyascutus the same as the sidehill gouger?

Yes. The Gyascutus is known by many regional names, including the sidehill gouger, the wampahoofus, and the side-hill winder. The folklorist Henry Tryon catalogued it in his collection Fearsome Critters under the mock-Latin name Membriinequales declivitatis.

What was the Gyascutus hoax?

In 1845 a pair of Yankee showmen toured the Midwest and South charging admission to see a live Gyascutus. In a darkened hall they showed only a set of hooves under a curtain, produced a wailing offstage, then shouted that the beast had escaped so they could flee with the money during the panic.

Is the Gyascutus dangerous to people?

The Gyascutus was never described as a threat to human life. Its only real danger was to a listener’s pride, since believing the story or agreeing to hunt the animal marked a person as a gullible newcomer.

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