Beast of Gévaudan

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve found this picture of the Beast of Gévaudan disturbing. Was it because his tongue was out? Or that he was lifting a paw? Or just his weird shape?

(For the original picture and more information on the beast, click here (scroll down for the original drawing).)

In high school, I remember trying to draw this picture and getting so frustrated that I quit drawing anything but doodles for decades.

I still didn’t get it right this time but I’ll deal with it better.

Over the years, many details about the beast became fuzzy in my mind. I remembered that the attacks were in France but not when. They ended in 1767, a few years before the Boston Massacre. The Beast was alive the same time as George Washington! I’d thought it was a Medieval legends but it was much more recent.

This was just about the time that Carl Linnaeus developed his classification system for animals, but it’s still unclear what species the beast belonged to.

The original drawing that I based mine on makes it look like a giant, elongated shrew or mutant weasel, but other artists had much different ways to depict it. It’s hard to say that my picture doesn’t look like the real beast when no one agrees what the beast looked like.

Maybe in a few decades, I’ll try again.