The story begins when Solon Springs was known as White Birch, and logging was a not uncommon way of making ends meet.

Pierre Maurice Sudlarski, an itinerant Irish woodsman, and Fange, his faithful dog, a Pekingese-coyote cross, after a long overland trek from the played out gold fields of California, wandered into town looking for fame or fortune or at least a decent meal now and then.

Sudlarski could handle an axe or a saw with the best of them, according to PMS, as he was known, but the rigors of work in the woods did not have any great appeal for him. He preferred to eke out a living entertaining townsfolk with his remarkable ability with the bagpipes and a passable Irish tenor voice. Unfortunately, the skirling of the pipes and Gaelic ballads such as Danny Boy, Rose of Tralee, and My Wild Irish Rose failed to make it into the Top Forty, and his hoped for career as a lounge act sank as quickly as a cow in a Bennett swamp.

Fange, on the other hand, lived a dog's life. His forebears, the pampered pets of Oriental royalty and the often despised wily forest creatures, endowed him with qualities that stood him in good stead. His regal bearing and sneaky ways confused and awed the male mutts of White Birch to the point that most of them refused to leave the protection of their front yards. The females of the species, on the other hand, delighted in the attention paid them by this visitor from the west coast.

PMS, weary of his disappointing venture into show biz, and Fange, just weary, soon decided to camp out on the shores of St. Croix Lake just to get away from the trials and tribulations of city life.

During the waning days of summer, they led an idyllic existence. There was an abundance of fish in the lake, game in the forest, and a wide variety of vegetables in the gardens of the green-thumbed housewives of White Birch.

With winter coming on, however they needed more than the companionship of each other to carry them through the ever-lengthening evenings. PMS, after his failure as an entertainer, was reluctant to show his face in town. Fange, after his great success as a four-legged Lothario, was equally loathe to face the town bitches and the strange looking puppy population that seemed to have exploded during his short but productive residence. So they decided to winter in the woods and contemplate the meaning of life.

This contemplative period lasted until the first hard freeze and rapidly diminishing provisions. As all people in northern Wisconsin know, cold and hunger do strange things to both the human and animal species. Sudlarski was very, very cold and very hungry, and "strange" hardly describes the effect it had on him.

One morning, while cooking his last slice of bacon, a bear obviously suffering the same effects of cold and hunger, stumbled into camp. To the bear, PMS looked like a rather scrawny and disheveled he-bear. To Sudlarski, the bear was at least a warm body in a fur coat, not very good looking, but passable under the circumstances. Despite the mutual attraction, the bacon was more important at the moment. A knock down and drag out battle for the rasher was the highlight of their initial meeting. After the melee, sitting on opposite sides of the campfire, munching the bacon bits they'd managed to salvage, they looked into each other's eyes and realized it was love at first sight. They sank wearily into a deep sleep and upon awakening the next morning decided to winter together for protection, affection, and whatever else their relationship came to.

Now Fange, somewhat jealous of PMS's new friend, started to search for a companion that would help him pass the winter.

Not being as hungry or as cold, he sought a creature of at least a similar background. Foxes were of no interest to him; he was out for bigger game. Up toward Hawthorne, rumor had it that there was a wolf migration trail. Being an adventuresome sort, Fange headed north. He didn't spy a pack crossing Old 53, but only a single young female, which was fortunate for Fange as he preferred the unmarried type. The wolf was lost. She, too, had heard of the migration trail, but it turned out to be a figment of the imagination of an early animal activist. Having learned all the social skills of his Irish mentor, the dog invited the she-wolf to spend the winter with PMS, his ursine friend and himself on the romantic shores of the little lake in the woods. With the wolf and the bear doing the heavy hunting for meat and Sudlarski making an occasional foray to the local general store to requisition the other necessities that would fit under his coat, the winter eventually passed.

Green slowly replaced white and another spring blossomed in the northland. And with the Spring came two rather eerie and wondrous events. The bear gave birth to a bundle of fur with strangely Irish features and the she-wolf became the mother of a puppy that had characteristics of its ancestors which made it the wildest looking creature since the duck billed platypus.

The results of dancing with a wolf and boogying with a bear would have a lasting effect on the legends and lore that trace the history of the quaint village on the quiet shores of St. Croix Lake.

There are those that say this is a preposterous story, nothing more than the fertile mental machinations of some demented citizens bent on befuddling the greenhorns. But others offer substantial evidence that the foregoing account is true.

The believers point to the frequent sightings of weird, long-haired beings roaming the back roads of Solon Springs and occasionally stopping at the rest area across the tracks in front of Prevost's Tavern. They speak in an unintelligible language barely reminiscent of Sudlarski's mother tongue.

They also point out the preponderance of the world's ugliest dogs of no discernible breed, which could only be the result of interbreeding with a canine who has wolf, coyote and Pekinese genes.

But by far the most conclusive evidence they offer is the women of the area, particularly those who take great pride in their gardens. When anything upsets their diligent efforts to produce a bountiful crop they become cranky, nauseous, headachy and generally difficult to live with. At harvest time, when their potatoes, rutabagas, onions and other plants are stolen by long-haired, bear-like denizens, they become absolutely frenzied. They blame it all on the descendants of old PMS himself.

As a matter of fact, these syndromes have even been given a name that offers further proof of the existence of the monsters of St. Croix Lake. The angry, upset and irate women are said to be suffering from the PM Sudlarskis.

The final proof of the monsters is the abnormally large number of bear-like creatures caught behind the White Birch Supper Club when corned beef and cabbage is featured on the menu.