Mark Twain: Cryptozoological Hoaxer

Posted by Scott Maruna on Dec 22 2006

Littered throughout the road of the relatively young history of cryptozoology have been speed-bumps: hoaxed carcass specimens. These pranks invariably send prognosticators scrambling and message boards aflutter with debate. Maddeningly, these fraudulent “finds” cast a black-eye upon the field and intermittently separate those critical-thinking investigators from the more precautious scrutinizers. In fact, when a duck-billed platypus carcass first made its way into the hands of an eighteenth century zoologist, several days were wasted as the research team endeavored to locate the stitchings that held this obvious practical joke together. Hoaxes are clearly nothing new and the study of them can, in a psychological sense, be as interesting as the analysis of the actual critters for which they are purported to be. To add to the list of famous zoological hoaxes and hoaxers, I submit one Mark Twain, aka Samuel Clemens. The following was carried in a March 1914 edition of the newspaper (The Courier) out of his hometown, Hannibal, Missouri:

Mark Twain had a constant playmate and chum, a boy about his own age, named Napoleon Pavey or, for short, Pole Pavey. One warm, spring day, the two boys having got a holiday, Mark shouldered an old flint-lock musket, and Pole an old squirrel rifle without any lock at all, which he carried along, as he said just for the looks of the thing, and went duck hunting over in Soy Bottom. The boys hunted faithfully for several hours and succeeded in killing a chicken hawk and a crow, after which they commenced their homeward march, not very proud of their success, as in this region at that day game abounded.

Finally, Mark stopped suddenly, as an idea struck him, an exclaimed:

“See here, Pole, let’s get up a rare…what d’ye call it? A rare geological specimen for the boss; you see he’s got a great hankerin’ for these things.”

“What’s a rare geological specimen, Mark?” said Pole, as he opened wide his eyes.

“Why, it’s a rare bird what ain’t never been seen in these parts before; something very uncommon like,” answered Mark.

“Where are you going to get her at, Mark? We ain’t got nothing but this old chicken-robber and egg-sucker, and they ain’t a bit uncommon,” queried the skeptical Pole.

“We’ll get her up to order, Pole,” answered Mark, as he flung himself on the green grass beneath a giant old elm tree.

The two boys went to work on their rare “geological” specimen. As Mark would pluck a feather from the tail of the crow, Pole would hand him a corresponding feather that had been plucked from the tail of the hawk, which Mark would carefully insert in the socked from which he had just pulled the crow’s feather. And thus, after two hours of steady work, every one of the long feathers of the hawk’s tail had been transferred to the crow, and it would have required a careful examination to have detected the fraud.

“How is that for a specimen, Pole?” said Mark, as he admiringly exhibited the retailed crow to the gaze of his companion, resplendent in the rich plumage of the chicken eater.

“She is a stunner, Mark; a regular stunner. I guess they ain’t never seen a bird like that in Hannibal before.”

The hawk was thrown away, and the boys trudged homeward. By the time they arrived in town the blood of the crow had congealed, and the false feathers in the tail had become firmly fixed.

As Mark had said, Judge Clemens, his father, was somewhat of a naturalist, and had a passion for whatever was rare and strange in the animal kingdom.

“Why, Mark!” he said, “Where in the world did you get that strange looking bird?”

“In my opinion,” replied Mark, with an air of importance that he was accustomed to assume in the presence of his father, “that is the bird of paradise; leastwise that it belongs to that species.”

That night the bird was carefully laid away in a place where it would be safe from the devouring presence of the old tomcats, which Mark afterwards wrote about as creating such fearful destruction at his sister’s candy pullings. The report soon circulated through the town that a strange bird, the like of which had never been seen before, was killed, and Mark and Pole became the heroes of the hour. The next day being Sunday, Judge Clemens invited all the wise men of the village of Hannibal to his house to examine and pass an opinion on the new “geological specimen”. They came. The bird was exhibited on a table, around which the savans gathered. One faction, headed by Dr. ——- maintained that the bird was nothing more than a common black crow, the tail of which had been turned gray by some accidental cause not understood, having possibly had salt thrown on in the young and tender days of the bird. The other faction, headed by Judge Clemens, scouted such an idea. It was absurd – ridiculous. They were willing to admit that the bird very much resembled the crow; that possibly it was a crow; but if so, it belonged to a separate and distinct species from any that had been before discovered.

The discussion was continued, and became exciting. Neither faction would admit themselves wrong and the other right. Mark and Pole occupied a position near the door, and were attentive and interested, though silent auditors.

“What!” exclaimed Judge Clemens, warming up, “Do you tell me that it would be possible by any external process to turn the feathers in the tail of that bird from black to the colors they are? These uniform rings and spots would defy the skill of the greatest painter that ever lived. No, gentleman, “continued the Judge as he rather violently took hold of the bird by the tail to examine the spots more closely; “no gentleman –“ But the discussion was cut short by the bird dropping back on the table, while the Judge held the tail in his hand.

“Let’s scoot Pole, “said Mark, “the show’s ended. “And the two boys vamoosed.

The Judge contemplated the “rare geological specimen with consternation, and then his eye wandered to the open door and caught a glimpse of his young hopeful and his companion in mischief cutting across the back yard for high timber.

I know some will argue me on my choice of the word “cryptozoological” in regard to this hoaxing, but I can’t help but feel that that is exactly what he was attempting to create, a hidden mystery animal. Mr. Clemens was a man of many talents…cryptozoological hoaxing was perhaps not one of them.