The Tuttle Bottoms Monster is a legendary creature said to inhabit a swampy area, north of Harrisburg, Illinois

Harrisburg, Illinois

Harrisburg is a city and township in Saline County, Illinois, United States. It is located about southwest of Evansville, Indiana, southeast of St. Louis, Missouri. The 2010 population was 9,017, with a township population of 10,790. It is the county seat of Saline County...

 on the Saline River watershed

Saline River (Illinois)

The Saline River is a tributary of the Ohio River, approximately long, in the Southern Illinois region of the U.S. state of Illinois. The river drains a large section of southeast Illinois, with a drainage basin of . The major tributaries include the South Fork, Middle Fork and North Fork, all...

, usually described as ape

Ape

Apes are Old World anthropoid mammals, more specifically a clade of tailless catarrhine primates, belonging to the biological superfamily Hominoidea. The apes are native to Africa and South-east Asia, although in relatively recent times humans have spread all over the world...

-like and hairy with a long snout similar to an anteater

Anteater

Anteaters, also known as antbear, are the four mammal species of the suborder Vermilingua commonly known for eating ants and termites. Together with the sloths, they compose the order Pilosa...

.

Reports

The Tuttle Bottoms Monster legend is familiar to generations of Saline County residents. Former Harrisburg Police Chief Gary Crabtree told the Harrisburg, Illinois Daily Register that his department received approximately 50 reports over 28 years of an unidentified beast in the area northwest of Harrisburg, some reporting a creature with two legs and some with four. Most described it as having a long, almost anteater-like snout.

Independent animal researcher Virgil Smith told the Register he believes the creature is not a monster out of myth but was an actual animal "released by the federal government" that has long since died. Smith said the creature was a hairy primate, stood on two legs, and was not scared of humans, adding that one couple reported the animal walked right up to them. Smith also claims that a former employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture confided to him that the department had launched a private investigation into the Tuttle Bottoms Monster.