Snallygaster

In American folklore, the snallygaster is a bird-reptile chimera originating in the superstitions of early German immigrants later combined with sensationalistic newspaper reports of the monster.

Early sightings associate the snallygaster with Frederick County, Maryland, especially the areas of South Mountain, Braddock Heights and the Middletown Valley.

[6] Early accounts describe the community being terrorized by a monster called a Schneller Geist, meaning "quick ghost" in German.

[5] 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."

(Life ): It was a trick of fate in a low comedy mood that Senator McCarthy should first have bounded into public view dragging the unlikely and protesting person of Mr. Lattimore to share with him a historic spotlight so grateful to the one and so acutely unwanted by the other.

For it led to the translation of Senator McCarthy into the symbol of a national snallygaster (a winged hobgoblin used to frighten naughty children in parts of rural Maryland), instead of one of the two things that he obviously is: an instinctive politician of a kind fairly common in our history, in which case the uproar he inspires is a phenomenon much more arresting than the senator; or a politician of a kind wholly new in our history, in which case he merits the most cautious and coldblooded appraisal.

[14] South Mountain Creamery, a dairy farm located in Frederick County, Maryland, produces an ice cream flavor named Snallygaster.