1950’s

In the late 1950’s residents of the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan told stories to their friends and neighbors of seeing a large rat-like creature that walked upright. William Liberman of Huntington Woods said the creature attacked his dog and during the fight “leaped over the fence of the backyard” and vanished into the night. “The Whatzit”, as newspapers called it, was said to have enormous ears and a long tail. Over the course of three weeks it was spotted by a number of witnesses.

Eventually The Whatzit was caught!

Police officer James T. Mavis,of the Huntington Woods Police department, thought the strange animal was a type of Chinchilla although he said the only chinchilla he had ever seen was in an encyclopedia. The police department fed The Whatzit dog food while they waited to turn the creature over to the Detroit Zoo. Later in the day a zoologist arrived and could not immediately identify the creature. Possession of The Whatzit was turned over to the Detroit Zoo and strangely the creature was never mentioned again.

Submitted by John E.L. Tenney