Burroughs on Varmint Stories

"Other animal sounds at night are the voices of the owls and whip-poor-wills. One night I heard a strange whistling, shrill and high-pitched, that I couldn't account for. I rather suspect it was made by a coon, but I'm not sure.
"A story circulated at one time that we had a strange varmint there in the woods. People said that the creature had killed a horse in one place, fought with dogs in another, and maimed a calf in a third. It was the talk of all the region for ten days or two weeks, and many persons really believed that some animal which had escaped from a menagerie was roaming about. The woods were avoided by the timid, but there was nothing to the yarn. People seem to have a hunger for that sort of thing, and to crave it as a sauce for the prose of their daily events. So the story grows wonderfully when it once gets started."

John Burroughs, from John Burroughs Talks: His Reminiscences and Comments (1922)