Twenty amateur zoologists, under the leadership of Professor MacNeil Weber, formerly of the University of Minnesota, who lives at 2925 Creston Avenue, the Bronx, beat the woods of Van Cortlandt Park all day Sunday in an effort to capture a horned hodag, of which Professor Weber declares but few specimens survive, and which, being a hybrid of unclassified origin, does not appear in scientific works on zoology.
    According to the hodag enthusiasts, there is only one authentic specimen in America. It was killed by a lumberjack in the employ of the Shevlin Lumber Company twenty years ago and is one of the prized possessions of the Northwestern Lumbermen’s Association. Late in the autumn of 1920 and again in the spring of 1921 boy scouts encamped in dense woods of the park reported having been pursued by a creature apparently about four feet long with four horns on its snout and a succession of spines extending down its back to and over a portion of the tail. Latter reports of the presence or such a creature were received from other sources, all of them agreeing in general description.
    Professor Weber describes the hodag as having a scaly body, somewhat resembling in shape that of a large lizard. In general aspect it presents certain characteristics of the South American iguana, but differs from the latter in that the iguana is a slow-moving creature, usually to be found lying on tree branches a short distance from the earth. The hodag is declared to be of an aggressive nature, inclined to attack rather than to retreat when disturbed. The Van Cortlandt hodag is reported to have been found invariably in the lower and more swampy regions of the park, and search for it has been directed especially to swampy thickets abounding in the park region.
    The hodag, according to best descriptions, is hairy of underbody instead of fish-skinned, like the iguana. It is incapable of great speed because of its short front legs, but using its long hind legs for propulsion it is enabled to spring considerable distances, some say as far as twenty feet. Although no sign of the strange animal was met with during Sunday’s expedition the searchers will try again next Sunday. It is hoped to add the hodag to Professor Hornaday’s collection of other odd animals in the Bronx Park Zoo.

From— New-York Tribune. (New York [N.Y.]), 21 March 1922. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.