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N A M E :
L A T I N M E A N I N G :
I D E N T I F I C A T I O N :
R A N G E A N D H A B I T A T :
N I C H E S :
B E N E F I T S :
O F F S P R I N G :
C O M P A R A B L E B E A S T S :
R A N G E M A P
THE BILLDAD.
(Saltipiscator falcorostratus.)
If you have ever paddled around Boundary Pond, in north-
west Maine, at night you have probably heard from out the
black depths of a cove a spat like a paddle striking the water.
It may have been a paddle, but the chances are ten to one that
it was a billdad fishing. This animal occurs only on this one
pond, in Hurricane Township. It is about the size of a beaver,
but has long, kangaroo-like hind legs, short front legs, webbed
feet, and a heavy, hawk-like bill. Its mode of fishing is to
crouch on a grassy point overlooking the water, and when a
trout rises for a bug, to leap with amazing swiftness just past
the fish, bringing its heavy, flat tail down with a resounding
smack over him. This stuns the fish, which is immediately
picked up and eaten by the billdad. It has been reported that
sixty yards is an average jump for an adult male.############
Up to three years ago the opinion was current among lumber
jacks that the billdad was fine eating, but since the beasts are
exceedingly shy and hard to catch no one was able to remember
having tasted the meat. That fall one was killed on Boundary
Pond and brought into the Great Northern Paper Company's
camp on Hurricane Lake, where the cook made a most savory
slumgullion of it. The first (and only) man to taste it was
Bill Murphy, a tote-road swamper from Ambegegis. After the
first mouthful his body stiffened, his eyes glazed, and his hands
clutched the table edge. With a wild yell he rushed out of the
cook-house, down to the lake, and leaped clear out fifty yards,
coming down in a sitting posture---exactly like a billdad catch-
ing a fish. Of course, he sank like a stone. Since then not a
lumber jack in Maine will touch billdad meat, not even with a
pike pole.#########################################
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