I grew up with my fathers tales of his growing up in the small town of Paxico Kansas. It is just a short drive west of Topeka where we lived and we visited often to visit his old friends. So as a child I listened to their stories as they sat and remember. One such story was of the Kazoo that roamed the area in the early 1900’s.

No one ever saw what the Kazoo was and I always thought it was a funny name but it still was scary for a kid to hear about. All any one every said was it was big. Lots of small animals, just pigs or calves would be killed and eaten on the spot or sometimes pulled into the brush to be eaten. A few tracks were found that looked like a big cat track. There were no mountain lions in Kansas so they ruled that out. The stories would go on about on dark nights you could hear the Kazoo in the back woods scream. At least it sounded like a woman’s scream. In fact it often caused search parties looking for some poor woman that may of been attacked. None were ever found. It was once seen on a full moon lit night near the edge of the woods. The person said it was taller than a man when it stood upright and was covered with long dark fur. It left marks in the mud that night where it sat down and the tracks that time were huge and really furry looking.

This caused a real scare that it was that big with no longer the tracks of a huge cat but of something. Sometimes a group of men with dogs went looking for the Kazoo but the dogs seem a bit shy to track what ever it was. So the  stories would go on as I sat wide eyed with a always open ear and wandering eye for any sign of the Kazoo. I never heard it and always hoped I never would but it made for a exciting youth for me. As soon as the Kazoo came so it went and was never heard of again. Still remains as a real animal or a hoax.  My dad later told me when I was grown that it was a friend of his in an old buffalo robe with pelts rapped on his feet that was seen that one night but still it never explained the screams that every one had heard. When I was in Nam I heard a panther scream in the Jungles and the Kazoo came to my mind with a chill that brought back that childhood scare again. Could the Kazoo have been a panther escaped from some traveling show or a real Urban terror?