♪ ♪ - Welcome to "In Wisconsin."

I'm Patty Loew.

This week... - I was so scared of needles like growing up and I snorted it and snorted and snorted.

- Heroin use has spiked nearly 400% in Wisconsin.

Find out what's fueling the demand.

And a monster in the Northwoods, just in time for Halloween.

- Hodag or not a hodag?

- That's a hodag, definitely.

- Michael Perry returns to show you how his chickens are living the high life.

- Welcome to the rolling poultry palace.

- It's all next on "In Wisconsin."

- Major funding for "In Wisconsin" is provided by: the people of Alliant Energy, who bring safe, reliable and environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.

Alliant Energy, we're on for you.

And the Animal Dentistry and Oral Surgery Specialists of Milwaukee and Oshkosh, a veterinary team working with pet owners and family veterinarians throughout Wisconsin, providing care for oral disease and dental problems of small companion animals.

With additional funding provided by Bike Wisconsin.

We begin this week with our continuing coverage on heroin use in Wisconsin.

It's spiked nearly 400% during the past five years, leaving law enforcement on the run and lives shattered.

"In Wisconsin" reporter Frederica Freyberg shows you how legal drugs used illegally are fueling heroin demand across the state and in Rock County.

(police chatter on radio) - Sergeant Jay Wood traverses the interstates one recent summer evening as part of Rock County's new inclusion in a federally designated, high-intensity drug trafficking area.

- ...searched and didn't find anything.

- Part of the effort to stop the movement of narcotics, particularly heroin, into the area.

- I think the community needs reassurance that we're doing something out there.

This is a serious problem and we've got deputies out here that are concerned about interdiction as far as what we can do to stop it.

- Off the highway and in town, agents search a car, finding evidence of heroin.

The location?

A Janesville trailer park where police say a vacant mobile home is used as a place to do heroin.

- She basically went there and shot up at the trailer.

- This is the remnants of a what's called a gem pack.

This was found in the car.

She is a known heroin user.

- Among those on this investigation, Deputy Chuck Behm, he's worked narcotics for more than 30 years, but has special insight into the growing problem of heroin.

- I think I first became aware of it five years ago, with it being in my home.

My stepdaughter started using, starting off with OxyContin, snorting it, and that progressed into heroin usage.

- Behm says the drug has infiltrated all walks from urban and rural to professionals, even school kids.

- We don't quite have the manpower and how can you ask for manpower when jobs are out of the county?

You don't have the tax base.

We're not even keeping abreast of it, in my determination.

It's beyond us right now.

- I've been around a long time.

I've been doing this for many years.

One thing is pretty clear to me, is that law enforcement is not the answer.

From a law enforcement standpoint, and we have to be very aggressive to put the bad guys in jail, but the real key to stop this is there's a generation that's lost.

To make them aware of how devastating it is to use narcotics of any type.

- I was so scared of needles like growing up and I snorted it and snorted and snorted... - Adam has been clean for nearly three years, but he began snorting heroin after starting with oxycodone pain prescriptions pilfered from medicine cabinets.

His addiction dovetailed with the entry of a new pure heroin on the market.

- About ten years ago, many of the Mexican and South American trafficking groups made a conscious market effort to increase the amount of heroin in the market, and they did that by increasing the purity levels.

And by doing that you're able to snort the heroin as opposed to injecting it with a needle.

So it opened up a whole new user community out there, that you wouldn't traditional see.

- Authorities say often, as in Adams case, users start with prescription pills.

- What ends up happening is that as the availability of those prescription drugs diminishes and as they have a more difficult time to get it, it's much easier to get heroin and heroin is actually fairly inexpensive.

- As cheap as $10 a dose.

And so drug enforcers are facing battles on two fronts, illegal use of precursor prescription drugs and the cheap and plentiful supply of heroin.

- We have far too much prescription drugs that are being passed out and we have far too many people that are getting pain medication that maybe could use something else.

And we as citizens need to do a better job of controlling our prescription drugs.

- Is your back still hurting you?

- Yeah.

It really hurts.

I just picked up a new prescription today.

- The Wisconsin attorney general recently started airing public service announcements warning parents about keeping prescription opiates out of reach.

- [Hospital Intercom] Doctor Davis, telephone.

- And the federal drug enforcement administration is working with the medical community.

- We don't tell doctors how to practice medicine, but we try to raise their awareness level of some of the prescription abuse that's going on out there.

Currently there's an estimated 7 million prescription drug abusers out there, which is more than the heroin, cocaine and other drugs combined.

- To combat this, the state legislature approved a bill that the governor has signed into law that tracks prescriptions for opiate painkillers, a new law that aims to deter doctors from over-prescribing and patients from doctor shopping to get the drugs.

But the street price of prescription pills is way higher than heroin, encouraging the drug's spread across the state.

- There's an increase in availability and demand, because it's economics that competition forces the price down.

- I remember the first time I snorted heroin.

You know, I knew that -- that I was in trouble, you know, because it took away all the pain that I ever knew in my life.

- And yet Adam will never forget the pain heroin itself caused.

- I was in and out of consciousness.

- Including nearly dying twice of an overdose.

(Police radio chatter) That pain, that hope, is what keeps enforcers like Deputy Chuck Behm working against the odds to stem the flow of heroin in his community.

- How can you die, pretty much, be brought back by medical teams, and still go back to using?

- And do it again?

- That's the control the drug has on people.

That's why I hate it so much.

I hate heroin.

- If you'd like to see part one of Frederica Freyberg's series on heroin in Wisconsin, just go to our website, wpt.org and click on "In Wisconsin."

In Wisconsin's Northwoods, the quest is on to find a monster just in time for Halloween.

It has a reputation as a fierce beast with a mysterious past, kind of like Bigfoot.

"In Wisconsin" reporter Art Hackett may have uncovered the truth about this mythical or not so mythical creature in Rhinelander.

♪ Hi Dee Hi, I'm the hodag Here for you to see ♪ ♪ I'm the greatest legend in the North... ♪ - The hodag permeates the culture of Oneida County seat.

The critters are all over downtown.

A hodag is the high school's mascot.

Souvenirs?

You want them?

Rhinelander's got them.

And then there's the big hodag in front of the chamber of commerce office.

♪ I'm a magical beast Who'll test your worth ♪ ♪ I'm a locally famous hodag ♪ ♪ I've horns and spikes upon my back ♪ ♪ And a spiney tail to wave ♪ On a foggy day the hodag can look like the fearsome creature of the woods it was when the legend began.

- We've been cross-country skiing on the Washburn Lake trails outside of Rhinelander when all of a sudden something big crossed the trail.

- The legend is spoofed in ads aimed at attracting tourists.

- After a great day of riding the beautiful trails in Rhinelander, we saw it.

- When I went to get the fish, something had eaten it.

- It ate half our doughnut.

- The official story is that the hodag is the product of the imagination of an early logger in northern Wisconsin.

However, "In Wisconsin" has discovered what may be the real story of the hodag.

First, the traditional version.

We tracked down Chris Dries.

He's a local photographer.

- I am the unofficial hodag researcher.

- He also played a bit part in the hodag TV commercials, at least we think it's him.

There are a lot of elusive elements in this story.

- Why this morning someone took my eyeglasses.

- Where did it come from?

- Well, I pretty much went back to 1893 with Eugene Sheppard, a lumberman, logger, businessman, apparently had heard rumors of the hodag, or a creature of such, and they developed the story accordingly.

- Pay attention to the words "heard of" the hodag.

That will be important later on in this story.

- It developed over a couple of years and then they actually had an official showing of the hodag and a public exhibition, as it were, of the creature in about 1895.

- The official historical society plaque notes this was a wooden puppet controlled by wires.

There is this picture of the capture of a hodag.

It's the basis for occasional pageants where the event is recreated.

This one was in 1950.

An actual hodag?

No one claims it is.

- And this was just basically a tall tale told by loggers?

- Well, apparently there had been prior to Eugene Sheppard's discovery, it had been rumored throughout the U.P.

that there was a creature in the woods that was similar to the hodag.

- Dries runs a website, hodagsightings.com, so for purposes of this story, he is our guy.

- We have what we think may be a hodag sighting.

- Oh, my goodness.

That's wonderful.

- This is an actual photograph.

A photograph taken about 350 miles northeast of Rhinelander in Lake Superior provincial park in Ontario.

The photo was taken right at water level on the shore of the Great Lakes' greatest lake.

- Hodag or not a hodag?

- That's a hodag.

Definitely.

- Actually, it is Missepehieu, a figure drawn by Ojibwa.

- To draw upon the powers.

- Bob Birmingham is an anthropology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha.

- Missepehieu is a part of a tradition that extends throughout the eastern part of the United States and even going into the Great Plains of a Great Manitou or spirit being, or beings, that inhabit water.

- The Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources estimates the pictographs were created between 150 and 400 years ago.

The representations of the spirit are common enough that one is seen in an effigy mound near Bob Birmingham's home in Madison.

- Head, leg, and then another leg here, body coming across here and then terminating in a very long tail.

- Dr. Theresa Schenk, of the UW-Madison American Indian Studies Department, is Ojibwa.

She agrees Missepehieu was a powerful spirit.

- It's often translated as a panther or lynx, even a lion, who lives at the bottom of the sea and this could be Lake Superior, Lake Winnipeg or Lake Huron, who draws men down to their deaths.

- But she had to look up a picture of the hodag.

- Did the pictures of the hodag you saw remind you of Missepehieu?

- No way.

He was composed of too many animals.

- Schenk says people are thrown off by the projections on the creature's back.

- I know that everybody wants those things along his back to be something connected to a lizard, but it's really the way they've depicted the hair.

- But Birmingham, who is a former state archeologist, says Sheppard likely did meet Ojibwa.

- And it is certainly possible that they came across paintings of this particular image.

Many of the loggers themselves were Ojibwa.

- They might have told an European there was this cat-like being.

- On the lakes, but not in the forest.

- When we showed Chris Dries the photo, he was intrigued.

- That indicates some of the research I've done as well, Art.

I have some manuscripts that go way back by the French explorers that indicate in French, the language, that there was a creature, as rumored when they came through here.

- After all, when you're in the business of promoting Rhinelander to visitors, an exotic cultural connection sells.

- ♪ I'm a hodag... ♪ If there is one.

♪ ...Nothing quite like me ♪ - Oh, no.

I think they created their own hodag.

- ♪ ...Like me Like me ♪ - To add to the mystery, after our interview Theresa Schenk did some more checking and did find references to a water spirit that had serpent-like qualities, but she did not find anything in Native American tradition like the hodag that combines serpentine and feline characteristics.

We have an update now on a young musician we featured last spring.

You may remember seeing trumpeter Ansel Norris two years ago in our coverage in the 2009 "Final Forte" program with the Madison Symphony Orchestra.

This teenager is making quite a name for himself, and as "In Wisconsin's" Liz Koerner reports, he's making national news from his home here in Madison.

♪ ♪ - Ansel Norris used to have time for cool cars.

- Especially Audis, those are my favorite cars.

My uncle has a TT Roadster.

That's like my favorite car.

- Now with college around the corner, music is taking a front seat in Ansel's life.

♪ ♪ - He just works super, super hard.

He does stuff over and over again.

- His mother Kathy got Ansel and his brother Alex started on violin at a young age.

- But he wasn't suited to the violin, so I had to cancel his lessons after a few years.

Then we tried piano, and then that wasn't quite right either.

Then he found the trumpet.

- This is the trumpet I use most often.

- That discovery helped him at a critical point in his life.

- I wasn't heading down the best path as a 6th or 7th grader.

Like I was hanging out with people I would consider to be the wrong people at the time.

I guess music kind of helped me through that.

- Music helps him in other ways as well.

♪ ♪ - If I ever like feel bad about something, I go play trumpet for a little while and it's all right again.

- Since he started on trumpet, Ansel's had teachers who both challenge and inspire him.

Scott Eckel at East High School in Madison is one of them.

♪ ♪ - I asked Dr. Eckel, what do you think I should play for solo and ensemble?

This is my freshman year.

He was like, "You should play this."

He gave me the Haydn concerto.

And at the time I was like, "Well, I can't play this.

This is unplayable."

He was like, "No, you can play it.

And, you will play ."

And he inspired me to keep going.

♪ ♪ - Ansel also gives credit to his trumpet teacher John Aley.

♪ ♪ - He's totally influenced my playing.

He's totally helped me get to where I am and probably where I will be.

- When you get to that dotted quarter, you let yourself do minuendo to it.

- Ansel's been winning awards in competition at both the local and national level.

In 2009 he performed with the Madison Symphony Orchestra as part of the Final Forte.

- He even has aspirations to be a soloist, which I think are remarkably realistic.

♪ ♪ - Recently, Ansel won admission to Young Arts Week in Miami an all-expense-paid competition offered by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.

♪ ♪ It's open to 17 and 18-year-olds in nine disciplines.

More than 4,000 applied.

Only 143 got in.

- The total organization is just total music performance, but it's visual, and writing, and dance, and all these musicians have the opportunity to interact with each other, learn about each other's disciplines, how they might identify themselves with the talent of these students in their disciplines.

And it's fantastic.

- Young Arts Week was a whirlwind of activity, like a recital, where Ansel was paired with another young artist he just met.

- I had a great pianist named Priscilla Chen.

and she was the best person to collaborate with.

She was like this little girl, but she had so much power.

- He also got to see other teams perform.

- Right away, I was stunned by the fact that like nobody wasn't amazing.

- During the week, arts professionals gave master classes.

Ansel went to one by Michael Tilson Thomas, the music director of the San Fransisco Symphony and artistic director of Miami's New World Symphony.

- Which was pretty amazing, like he's got this level of thought.

- The critiques he was giving them, they made sense.

♪ ♪ - Young Arts Week also included a competition.

Ansel won top honors on his trumpet and a check for $10,000.

- (Audience applauding) - John Aley says it's an impressive credential that will help with college auditions.

- If I were auditioning him, I didn't know him, and I saw this on his resume, I would go, oh.

♪ ♪ - On the days where I have a really good performance, I couldn't find like any little quibbles with, I'm like the happiest person in the world.

♪ ♪ - In addition to the $10,000 cash prize, Ansel Norris won an one-week residency in New York sponsored by the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.

Last summer, he attended the Aspen Music Festival and school in Colorado and was the runner-up in its bass and percussion concerto competition.

He's now attending Northwestern University in Illinois.

It's time once again to check in with our country correspondent, author Michael Perry.

Before the leaves turned, he received a very important package in the mail in Eau Claire County.

- How you doing?

Feed mill called yesterday and said, "Your chicks are in."

That's what I call a twitter message.

(Chicks chirping) How was your trip?

A lot of folks don't realize, but these little chicks, they come in the mail.

You'll get a call from the post office, or in this case, down at the feed mill and they'll say your chicks are in.

It's one of my favorite things.

It's kind of like Christmas right in the middle of summer.

Okay, kids.

Going to leave you to it.

Put the safety screen over the top.

That's intended to prevent varmints and 2-year-olds from getting to the chicks.

Weight it down a little bit and then put out the heat lamp, give them a little sun to soak under, as it were.

You come back in about 15 minutes and they'll be all together in one little fuzzy yellow cluster right under that heat lamp.

The stock tank is just the first stop.

That's the crib.

That's the nursery.

The next stop is the pullet house.

(Chickens clucking) Hello, ladies.

I call it the pullet house, but actually it's just our old chicken coop.

You may remember this building from the day I remodeled it.

(Fast paced music) That was a long day.

All right, ladies.

There you go.

These are pullets, which means they're young hens.

They should start laying eggs sometime in the fall at which point they can earn their keep.

So, these young ladies will be in this coop for a few more weeks and then, when we think they're ready to go pro, we'll move them to the big house.

♪ ♪ How about this baby?

Welcome to the rolling poultry palace.

A chicken coop on wheels.

This is clearly an upgrade on other properties.

Take special note of the sill-less construction, which allows hassle-free by-product extraction... centralized food distribution center... detachable porch, handcrafted, portable gate unit with auto lock, fully cleated, detachable ramp, fully interiorized pocket door componentry.

Simply remove, raise, and insert to hold.

And how happy are the residents of the Perry Portable Poultry System?

Let's ask them.

What do you think, ladies?

Oh, look at the joy.

You can feel the joy in their wings.

You can hear the joy in their voices.

Are you happy?

Do you like where you live?

Are you happy with that?

Are you satisfied?

How about you, sir?

Are you happy with your Perry Portable Poultry System?

(Chicken crows) From the stock tank, to the pullet house, to the big house.

It's all about one thing.

♪ ♪ - Author Michael Perry.

Michael wants to thank his cousin Ivan without whom the coop on wheels would still just be a stack of lumber.

And we'd like to thank producer Andy Moore and photographer Wendy Woodward for that report.

Brewing hops, burning pianos and what once was the world's largest ammunitions plant, it's all coming your way in a brand new edition of "In Wisconsin" next week.

- I'm Art Hackett in Sauk County, where 60 years of Wisconsin military history is slowly being ripped apart.

- With an acre of farmland and enough of these, you can expect to earn up to $10,000 a year.

I'm "In Wisconsin" reporter Liz Koerner.

They aren't easy to identify at this stage, but here's a hint.

These plants hop right out of the ground.

- This is "In Wisconsin" reporter Jo Garrett.

What's the connection between England's World War II pilots and this flaming piano with a turkey on top?

Come with us to the Roxbury Tavern.

(Piano playing) - Those brand new "In Wisconsin" reports next Thursday at our new time, 7:30, right here on Wisconsin Public Television.

Finally this week, we take you to the shores of Mineral Lake.

It's located eight miles west of Mellen within the Chequamegon Nicolet National Forest.

Mineral Lake is owned by the U.S. Forest Service and was designated a state natural area in 2007.

Enjoy the fall view and have a great week in Wisconsin.

♪ ♪ - Major funding for "In Wisconsin" is provided by: the people of Alliant Energy, who bring safe, reliable and environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.

Alliant Energy, we're on for you.

And the Animal Dentistry and Oral Surgery Specialists of Milwaukee and Oshkosh, a veterinary team working with pet owners and family veterinarians throughout Wisconsin, providing care for oral disease and dental problems of small companion animals.

With additional funding provided by Bike Wisconsin.