Vintage book cover illustration of a snarling dragon-like monster…

QT: Weird Wednesdays What is the weirdest creature? My vote is for the Snallygaster! First there was Monster Monday @Unleashed https://budgetpixel.com/p/35776 Then Terrifying Tuesdays @Caylacatz https://budgetpixel.com/p/36170 And now we have Weird Wednesdays The Snallygaster terrified the Maryland, USA, countryside in the 1700s. Wiki says "The earliest incarnations of the creature mixed the half-bird features of a siren with the nightmarish features of demons and ghouls. The snallygaster was described as half-reptile, half-bird having a metallic beak lined with razor-sharp teeth, occasionally alongside octopus-like tentacles. The snallygaster was rumored to swoop silently from the sky to pick up and carry off its victims. The earliest stories claim that this monster sucked the blood of its victims. Seven-pointed stars, which reputedly kept the snallygaster at bay, can still be seen painted on local barns." and I like this bit of more recent history in Wiki: "Newspaper accounts throughout February and March 1909 describe encounters between local residents and a beast with "enormous wings, a long pointed bill, claws like steel hooks, and an eye in the center of its forehead." It was described as making screeches "like a locomotive whistle."[8] A great deal of publicity surrounded this string of appearances, with the Smithsonian Institution offering a reward for the hide. U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt reportedly considered postponing an African safari to personally hunt the beast.[9] It was later revealed that these reports were part of a hoax perpetrated by Middletown Valley Register editor George C. Rhoderick and reporter Ralph S. Wolfe in an attempt to increase readership. The descriptions they invented borrowed themes from existing German folklore, including dragon-like creatures who snatched children and livestock, and appeared to invoke descriptions of the Jersey Devil, which had been spotted mere weeks earlier."