I am working on a year long calendar contest on DA. I will be submitting a picture each month based on a different cryptozoological beast of North America. I've been wanting to give back to my loyal friends and watchers, and I figured, what better way than to offer you a free calendar. You may download this image for free, for personal use only. Please do not abuse this privilege. When all is said and done, at the end of this year, I hope to make a printed version with dates available in time for 2015. (If this works out well and you guys like it, I may do a world-wide version next year in time for 2016. I know that is a long way off!)

This month's monster is a Pukwudgie. March is usually the season of the Leprechaun, but since I am doing North American cryptids I thought this guy made a pretty close counterpart since he is known to use magic and trickery to kidnap children or lure people to their deaths.

"A Pukwudgie is a 2-or-3-foot-tall (0.61 or 0.91 m) being from the Wampanoag folklore. In Native American lore, Pukwudgies have the following traits and abilities;

they can appear and disappear at will
they can transform into a walking porcupine (it looks like a porcupine from the back, and the front is half-troll, half-human and walks upright)
they can attack people and lure them to their deaths
they are able to use magic
they have poison arrows
they can create fire at will
Pukwudgies control Tei-Pai-Wankas which are believed to be the souls of Native Americans they have killed.

Native Americans believed that Pukwudgies were best left alone. When you see a Pukwudgie you are not supposed to mess with them, or they will repay you by playing nasty tricks on you, or by following you and causing trouble."

You can read more about them here- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pukwudgie

Painted in Sai and Gimp 2.6