THE WAPALOOSIE

In the damp forests of the Pacific Coast, stretching eastward as far as the St. Joe River in Idaho, lives a peculiar little creature known to loggers as the wapaloosie. About the size of a dachshund but unrelated to dogs, it feeds exclusively on shelf fungus and conchs, which it collects with remarkable ease, even from the tops of hundred-foot snags. Climbing is second nature to the beast, for its feet and toes are shaped like a woodpecker’s, allowing it to inch upward like a measuring worm, while the spiked tip of its tail gives extra grip as it ascends the tallest firs. One of its strangest qualities was revealed when a logger on the Humptulips River in Washington shot a specimen and turned its soft pelt into a pair of fur mittens. At first he wore them proudly, but to his dismay discovered that whenever he gripped an ax handle or any tool, the mittens slid upward and off as if they had a will of their own. Unable to use them, he tossed them aside on a skid road, where they were last seen creeping away over logs and brush, still climbing toward some phantom treetop.