The Story of Oscar
By GARY KAUFFMAN
"One man's obsessive search for a giant
turtle ended just like the fable — the
turtle won"
(The following is taken from Northern
Indiana Perspective.)
Aside from Godzilla, few animals have made
an impact on a town the way Oscar did on
Churubusco.
Oscar, you might guess, was something
fierce, like a grizzly bear, a wolverine or
at least a Doberman
Pinscher. But take a drive through the
little town of Churubusco and you'll quickly
realize that Oscar was a
turtle.
In fact, Churubusco is obsessed with the
turtle motif — a turtle guards the entrance
to the park, adorns the
town's letterhead and is popularized on the
signs of many businesses.
But Oscar wasn't some box turtle you might
crush on the highway. Oscar was the Godzilla
of turtles, a turtle
known as The Beast of Busco.
Churubusco, located 15 miles north of Fort
Wayne, boasts a population of 1,800. In an
odd twist of fate, the
Indian chief who lived in the area when the
first white settler came was named Little
Turtle. A post office made
Churubusco an official town in 1847. But for
the first 100 years of its existence 'Busco
was virtually unknown.
Then Oscar came to town.
Reports claimed Oscar's shell could have
been used as a dining room table. His neck
was likened to a stove
pipe and his head was the size of a child's.
"One report said it was as big as the top of
a car, and in the 1940s, the top of a car
was pretty good sized,"
says Chuck Mathieu, president of the
Churubusco town council and manager of
Egolf's IGA. Mathieu was alive then,
but just barely, so he never saw Oscar.
The trouble was, the number of people who
didn't see Oscar greatly outnumbered those
who did. Of the people
who saw The Beast of Busco, only one man was
sure of what he'd seen. That man was Gale
Harris, who owned the
property containing Fulk Lake, which Oscar
called home.
Some people weren't sure about Harris'
report of this enormous turtle; many others
simply ridiculed him. In
March 1949, Harris launched a massive effort
to track down the beast and display him to
the world.
"He wanted to prove to people that he hadn't
imagined it," says Viv Rosswurm, managing
editor of the
Churubusco News.
The search began during a lull in major
news. Editors across the nation latched onto
the story, splashing the
search in headlines from coast to coast.
Soon people in New York and Chicago were as
interested in Harris' search
as the people in Churubusco.
Ultimately, illness and bad luck forced
Harris to call off his search before finding
Oscar. The turtle was
never seen again. But far from dying away,
the legend of Oscar grew. Probably more
people believe in Oscar now
than did in 1949.
"I think most of them want to believe,"
Mathieu says. "They think there was
something there, although it may not
have been the actual size. I'm sure as the
years have gone on, the turtle has grown."
Rosswurm knows the people of Churubusco
believe in Oscar. "Especially the old
timers. They all knew somebody
who saw it. They're pretty protective about
the fact that it was real."
There are even some new theories about the
giant turtle. "There are those who think it
was a hoax," Rosswurm
says. "But you probably won't find them in
Churubusco."
Churubusco quickly latched onto the turtle
theme, starting the Turtle Days Festival in
1950. It is still
celebrated every June. Turtle Days has all
the traditional features such as rides,
games, food stands, a merchants
tent, a parade and entertainment every
night. But the highlight is the Turtle
Races, a four-hour event as turtle
after turtle is eliminated until one emerges
as a winner. These turtles, though, are the
size of a dessert plate,
not a dining room table. Merchants also
recognized a good thing when they saw it.
Even today, a shopping mall is called Turtle
Town Plaza. A car dealership goes by the
name Oscar's Autos,
with a picture of a turtle. Even the town
government adorns its official logo with a
picture of a happy turtle.
"The town did balk, though, about naming the
school team the ‘Snappers' or ‘Turtles,'"
Rosswurm says.
Instead, they became the Churubusco Eagles.
An eagle is the most important symbol of the
United States, stirring
feelings national pride. But in Churubusco,
it is nothing compared to the turtle.
With shows like Unsolved Mysteries, Fact or
Fiction and Real TV, we may not get too
excited about the search for
a big turtle. But in 1949, it was a major
news item.
In March of that year, the search began for
Oscar, The Beast of Busco, a turtle so giant
you could set out
dinner for eight on his back, with a mouth
so large he could eat a soccer ball.
You might think this was a story that
interested a few yokels down at the local
brew dispensary. But radio
and newspapers across the nation fell in
love with the story. Some European papers
even picked it up.
The story began in July 1948 when two men
from Churubusco, Ora Blue and Charley
Wilson, went fishing in Fulk
Lake on Gale Harris' property. When they
finished, they told Harris about a giant
turtle they'd seen.
According to Churubusco resident Rusty Reed,
a turtle expert, the original report was a
hoax. He bases that
on a conversation he had with Blue.
"Charley Wilson was known to tell tall tales
and Gale Harris was known to believe
anything," Reed says.
So when the newspaper reported the sighting
of a large turtle on Harris' farm, the two
fishermen enjoyed a
big laugh. Except that Harris now claimed to
have seen the turtle himself, and it was
every bit as big or bigger
than Wilson and Blue had reported.
This wasn't the first time a large turtle
had been sighted in Fulk Lake. The original
owner of the property,
Oscar Fulk, claimed to have spotted a giant
turtle in 1898. Another sighting came in
1914.
During the first days of March 1949, Harris
saw the turtle again. A group of townspeople
suggested capturing
it, and according to newspaper reports they
just about caught Oscar on the first day. A
trap of stakes and chicken
wire penned the beast in about 10 feet of
water. A movie (now apparently vanished)
showed the turtle swimming just
below the surface. But you don't catch a
legend that easily. Oscar flexed some muscle
and waltzed out of the trap.
On March 7, the Columbia City newspaper
reported the search. The next day, reporters
from Fort Wayne showed
up. One was a young reporter from United
Press International, who sent the story
across the wires.
Timing is everything, and the timing was
perfect for such a story. With America
between wars and all the Nazi
war criminals tried, Americans were ready
for a happy story. On March 9, newspapers
across the nation ran the
story of the giant turtle.
The Fort Wayne newspapers, though, derived
more enjoyment poking fun at Churubusco for
believing in such a
beast. They jokingly named him "Oscar"
(perhaps after Oscar Fulk) and "The Beast of
Busco." The names stuck.
Harris didn't find any of it particularly
amusing. In fact, his reputation was being
questioned, so he began
searching in earnest for the turtle. It was
then that the whole affair took on a
circus-like atmosphere.
On March 12, 200 people traveled to Harris'
farm to watch the search. The next day,
bumper-to-bumper traffic
wound around Churubusco to the farm while
planes flew overhead, hoping for a glimpse
of Oscar. By March 14, 3,000
visitors including on-the-spot media
reporters trampled across Harris' property.
It soon became impossible to
tell the truth from fiction of what was
happening in the search.
"It was a three-ring circus," Reed says.
"Reporters were just making up stuff."
Harris and local garage mechanic Kenneth
Leitch put their heads together developing
ingenious traps to capture
Oscar. Harris created a "periscope" that
allowed him to peer into the murky water,
hoping for a glimpse of Oscar.
Later reports say Harris nearly ruined his
eyesight from the long hours of squinting
through it.
On March 18, Harris somehow obtained a full
diving suit, and Woodrow Rigsby donned it to
walk along the
bottom to try to roust Oscar. But the helmet
leaked and Rigsby called off the search. By
March 20, 400 cars per
hour came to the Harris home. Another diver,
Walter Johnson, spent 2˝ hours in the lake,
but gave up because he
kept sinking chest deep into the mucky
bottom.
In April, excitement flared when two
Indianapolis men claimed they had captured
Oscar. But it didn't take
long to discover that what they had was a
sea turtle they'd purchased in an attempt to
cash in on the Oscar craze.
But that gave someone an idea. Soon a sexy
female sea turtle was delivered in an
attempt to lure Oscar out of
the water. That didn't work, either —
possibly because The Beast of Busco may have
been an Oscarette rather than
an Oscar.
Public interest waned by May as Oscar
continued to elude searchers. But Harris'
interest stayed as intense as
ever. He continued various capturing
techniques, including dynamite charges to
"shock" Oscar to the surface.
In September, Harris pulled out all the
stops. He drove his tractor to the lake and
hooked up a sump pump. He
was going to pump water out of that lake
until Oscar had nowhere to hide.
That revived interest in The Beast of Busco
and the crowds returned. This time Harris
charged admission to
pay for the pumping and to offset crops lost
under trampling feet. Harris burned up 2,000
gallons of gas as he
pumped water day and night, reducing the
seven-acre lake to a mere acre.
Thousands of people, including senators and
celebrities, gathered each weekend hoping to
see the world famous
turtle. On Oct. 13, about 200 people got
their wish as Oscar leaped from the water to
try to catch a duck used as
a lure.
The end was in sight and Harris was ready to
be vindicated. But luck favored Oscar rather
than Harris. The
mucky lake bottom was unstable, making
pumping hard. Finally the pump wore out and
the tractor broke down. A crane
was brought in to dredge the lake. The
inevitable capture of Oscar dragged on for
weeks. By December, enough water
remained to still hide Oscar.
Then appendicitis felled Harris. During his
convalescence in the hospital, the weather
turned nasty, but
brought rain instead of snow. By the time
Harris was well enough to mount the search
again, the lake had refilled.
The search was over. Harris' health and
money were gone. The following year, he sold
the farm, including the
turtle traps. In 1994, film maker Terry
Doran made a documentary entitled "The Hunt
for Oscar" which highlighted
the search.
Curiously, though, no one has searched for
Oscar since 1949. And there have been no
sightings. The farm's
current owner doesn't take kindly to
strangers asking about the lake.
But who really wants to find Oscar now? The
legend is a lot more fun than the real
turtle ever would have
been. Town council president Chuck Mathieu
believes that's true. "Had they actually
found the turtle," he says,
"I don't know that it'd be as interesting."
We'll probably never know whether a large
turtle named Oscar really existed in
Churubusco in 1949. So now our
question becomes, Is it possible that he
could have existed?
The answer, according to turtle expert Rusty
Reed, is yes — although probably not quite
like the legend
describes.
Reed lives in rural Churubusco, and until
recently bred alligator snapping turtles —
larger-than-life
versions of their Northern Indiana cousins,
the common snapping turtles. The world
record for a common snapper is
70 pounds, with the average at around 40
pounds. The largest recorded alligator
snapper weighed 316 pounds. Back
when trappers were trolling swamps for
alligator snappers, it wasn't unusual to
find them at 250 pounds in the
wild.
Reed currently owns the third largest
captive alligator snapper, weighing in at a
man-sized 165 pounds. Most
significantly for believers in Oscar, it's
head is 9 inches in diameter and its jaws
expand to the size of child's
head — virtually identical to reports about
Oscar.
So Reed believes that if Oscar existed, he
had to be an alligator snapping turtle. But
he wouldn't expect to
find even a normal-sized alligator snapper
roaming around Churubusco.
Alligator snappers prefer warmer climates,
and live almost exclusively in the
Mississippi River drainage
areas of Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas
and Missouri. None has ever been recorded as
far north as Northern
Indiana — unless you count Oscar.
But Reed says a 1985 study revealed that
alligator snappers have a tendency to wander
north as they age.
Since they also gain weight with age — about
a pound a year — the person conducting the
study found some of the
largest alligator snappers to the north of
their normal range.
"So if an alligator snapping turtle made it
this far north, it might be large, possibly
the largest ever,"
Reed says.
But not as large as a dining room table,
probably not even the size of a card table.
In his study of The
Beast of Busco, Reed finds no reference to
anyone ever seeing the entire turtle out of
the water. That means the
most anyone saw was the head, neck and part
of the shell. Alligator turtles have heads
way out of proportion to
their bodies. Reed believes the enormous
head led people to overestimate the shell
size.
"If you saw one of my turtles stick its head
out of the water, you'd say its shell size
would have to be six
feet in diameter," Reed says. His
165-pounder has a oval shell that is 26
inches long and less than that wide.
Although Reed has studied the Oscar
phenomenon, he won't come right out and say
whether he believes it was
true or not. He prefers to let people draw
their own conclusions. But Harris' massive
efforts to find Oscar may
hold a clue.
"How far is a guy going to go to prove it if
it isn't true?" Reed wonders. If Oscar did
exist, what happened
to him? There are several theories. One is
that he found some underground channels,
swam from the lake and emerged
elsewhere. Reed finds that one farfetched,
since the lake bottom is several feet of
muck and the Churubusco area
has no underground channels.
Another theory, the one Reed believes is
most likely, is that Oscar suffocated at the
mucky bottom of the
lake trying to escape the draining effort.
But there is one other possibility — Oscar
is still alive, living contentedly out of
the public eye at Fulk
Lake. "They can live for maybe 400 years,"
Reed says. "And they will spend countless
years in one spot, given
sufficient food."
That's good enough to keep the legend alive
for another 50 years.
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