Maeve Rogers
Appearances
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
Everybody moves back into the light, even if it takes them a minute.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
Well, Maeve Rogers. I am an education and outreach specialist for a wolf project in Minnesota. And I've spent a lot of time following wolves and watching them in multiple different environments. So I know a lot about them.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
So I grew up in Northern Illinois and... I don't really know exactly when it started, but I have always had this deep fascination with animals, but wolves specifically. And in Illinois, we really don't have wolves. So as soon as I could, I moved to Montana to pursue, hopefully Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
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Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
Yeah, I think that alone is super fascinating, especially long before modern technology allowed people to really communicate across continents and different cultures and people groups developed like eerily similar folklore and stories like tales of large, mysterious creatures, whether they're wolves like we're talking about or Bigfoot.
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Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
The Yeti or even dragons exist across vastly different cultures. Yeah, it's just really interesting. Despite having no known way of sharing these legends at the time, it makes me wonder, why do these themes persist in human history?
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
And while we can't draw a definitive conclusion, it is really compelling to consider how our ancestors, living in different environments and places, arrived at such similar narratives about the creatures.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
For sure. I mean, I hear a lot of stories where they were out in the woods alone and got surrounded by this massive pack of wolves. And they were so scared that they had to climb up a tree. I hear things like that all the time. I've heard many stories about people just being out in the wilderness going down a trail or a road and seeing this wolf track that was like the size of a dinner plate.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
I've heard that quite a bit. Or just wolves being like these massive, massive creatures, you know, that are 200 plus pounds, which is really funny because actually up in northern Minnesota where I work, the average size, the weight of a wolf is around 60 to 62 pounds. They really don't get too big.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
hesitant for this um but yes I really like yeah I mean I've had this I had one moment that I keep kind of going back to and really wondering like what actually happened um and in the moment it was really terrifying but kind of having some time away from it I you know I have different ideas of I guess what I could have seen or what what happened but are you willing to share this Yeah, I'll share.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
So a big part of my job, again, is just going out into the woods and figuring out what wolves are doing based on the GPS locations. We also work with a large array of remote trail cameras. So on this day, I was maintaining a series of cameras that we had like way out
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Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
the middle of nowhere you know in a lot of places that we hike i feel like people really haven't been in centuries because it they're the places are just really unappealing you know there's a lot of like walking through swamps and bogs and like super thick forests with mosquitoes and ticks and everything so i was way out there kind of going down a little game trail and i was using my phone to track the trail i was on and seeing exactly how far away i was from the camera
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
It just kind of felt like a lot of things went silent around me. And a lot of times when that happens in the natural world, that kind of means there's a predator or something that. prey animals or birds feel that they need to conceal themselves around. So I, you know, deafening silence kind of, and I hear a snap of a twig or something in front of me.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
And I look up from my phone and I see something, not exactly sure what it was, but it was large about the size of the small sapling trees that were around the game trail. I was walking down. So maybe anywhere from like six to eight feet tall. And it's just this mass. I didn't really see any definitive features to cue me into what it was other than it being gray. You know, I froze for sure.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
And I'm one of those people that kind of freezes in situations to try to get like a grasp of what could be going on. And I wanted to know how to appropriately react to the situation with whatever wildlife I was about to encounter. So I kind of just froze there. I'm literally employed to identify animals. And I'm very well versed with animals up in northern Minnesota.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
And I still can't like really describe them. what it was or what I even think happened. The only thing that I really remember is just gray. And it happened so fast and it moved just into the woods and out of sight. And I remember sitting there still in the silence and all I could hear, and I just remember this moment very clearly, was just boom, boom, boom.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
Just three very distinct bipedal steps going into the woods. and then nothing. It was silent. It kind of just felt and seemed like it disappeared because nothing else happened after those three steps. I kind of snapped back to reality and dove into a bush next to me because then I was like, okay, something's going on here. I don't know what just went into the
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Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
feeling of not knowing what's around you is very scary. I stood just trying to hear anything else because... I figured if it was a moose, I would be able to pick up on that a little bit more because moose are also very elusive and scared of people, but they're huge animals. And when they get scared and start running through the woods, you're going to hear it.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
And you're going to hear their hooves hit the ground and their distinct gait with their four legs crashing through the woods, hitting branches as they go, snapping logs and twigs and just creating a whole mess. But all I heard was silence and those three steps and nothing else. Um, yeah, so that I guess is my story.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
And I don't really have any other conclusions other than like, something was there. It was definitely alive. And I think the scariest thing that I could think of is honestly just a man being randomly out in the woods where I was and, you disappeared into the woods next to me.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
I consider myself to be pretty agile in the woods, but I don't know who else has that much experience going through the woods where I was and why anybody would be out there. But yeah, it just kind of disappeared.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
Part of me feels like really frustrated that I couldn't figure out what it was because I really love seeing animals out and being able to like keep this list of like all these wild creatures that I've seen. And I think that's been kind of gnawing at me a little bit is not exactly knowing what I saw, whatever it was.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
But yeah, I think that that must be the most frustrating part is just kind of not really knowing what was there. And I guess needing that validation and like the proof with my science side of the brain. But then like the curious part of me really was like, well, what was that? Like, I don't know. It's hard to say.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
biologist like researcher side to me is very data oriented and very focused on science and needing like definitive answers but then there is this other side of me like my personal side I guess that is super interested in all these other things you know that we will never be able to explain and never have answers for just because that's the world and I don't think we were meant to know
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
Everything, you know, I've had interesting, like unexplainable things happen that like I can't really. draw conclusions from. But I do know that we have these animal populations that live at such low densities, whether they're endangered or threatened, kind of like how wolves used to be.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
To me, it makes me think that, and especially in the area that I've worked at, I've had to go and try to recover some of our dead study animals. And even though we know pretty much exactly where they are due to their GPS collars, it still can be incredibly hard to document things and to gain data and to recover animals that have passed.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
So it kind of makes me think that if there are other populations, part of me really is so curious and I want to just know more and to be able to prove some of these theories and these stories from folklore would be super interesting to me because how are all these different people across time coming up with such similar stories? It just piques my interest quite a bit.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
And just knowing what I know about more rare or elusive animals, they are hard to find even in modern day with the technology that we have. And we're still discovering new species, especially in the ocean. The ocean's not even like it's barely been explored and researched and we're still finding out so much more.
Otherworld
Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
I kind of think both sides blend a little bit that, you know, I'd like that hardcore data and science, but I am also super curious to the aspects that we don't know. And we're still trying to figure out. And again, going back to wolves, they are some of the most studied land mammals and carnivores of all time. And we are still learning really, really,
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Episode 114: The Michigan Dogman Pt. 2
important, fundamental things about them and their ecology. So the fact that something else could be out there, like something, some real aspects to these stories that people have is, yeah, just very compelling to me. Always open to it because I'm super curious. But again, it's just like one of those things that I'd really like to see some proof.