Tigermunks
Location: Vilas County
Cryptids, Folk Heroes / Legends
by @wisconsinwizard
The tigermunks, also known as the camp chipmunks or the Vilas County tigers, are a legend said to be from the time when Paul Bunyan logged Vilas County.
Back then, Paul's camp was so big that he had to employ several teams of ox drivers to keep his men fed, with a few dedicated to just hauling away the prune pits leftover from his men's meals. These ox drivers continuously dumped a truly massive amount of prune pits into the wilderness around Vilas County, where they were consumed by the local chipmunks.
These chipmunks gorged themselves and grew to such a size that (due to their stripes) people mistook them for tigers. They were so fierce that they drove away the local bears and cougars. The men of Vilas County went on weekly tiger hunts to try to curb the chipmunk population, but although dozens if not hundreds of tigermunks were killed weekly, this barely dented their population!
On a somewhat interesting note, when British explorer Jonathan Carver travelled through Wisconsin not all that far from this area, he spotted on the Wisconsin River a creature he described as a "tyger of America," which he said had a tawny colored fur. This "tyger" he saw, then, would have had the same stripes and coloration as a chipmunk, perhaps giving some credence to the tigermunk legend!
Sources