In Mythical Creatures of the North Country, author Walker Wyman tells a 19th-century lumberjack legend of a man who heard a galloping noise as he traveled through the forest. When he looked around, the man saw, but was unable to catch, a horse with eight legs positioned like a spider's. This animal was also called "Old Spider Legs." This story was part of the American lumberjack tradition of telling fantastical stories about "fearsome critters," among them the jackalope and the Jersey Devil.