The Snallygaster

The German settlers of the Middletown Valley brought a monster with them: the Schneller Geist, the quick spirit, worn down to Snallygaster, a half-bird half-reptile thing with a metal beak and one eye that swooped on the Frederick County hills. It got a second life in 1909 when local newspapers ran a straight-faced hoax of fresh sightings and claimed the Smithsonian was hunting it. Told here as the folklore it is, in real and pretty country.