Augerino
The augerino is a legendary creature present in the folk tales of lumberjack and ranching communities in the western United States.[1] Tales of the augerino described it as a subterranean creature which inhabited the drier regions of Colorado.[1] The augerino required a dry environment to survive and would bore holes in dams and irrigation ditches to let the water drain out. Some accounts described the augerino as a type of worm,[2] though tales differ on the exact physical description of the creature.[1] The name appears to derive from the diminutive of the common hand tool, the auger.
A 1941 investigation of the folk tales of Middle Park, Colorado uncovered stories of the augerino describing it as a gigantic, corkscrew-shaped, indestructible wormlike creature which lined its burrows with a silica substance to keep them from collapsing.[3] Some residents apparently believed the creature was authentic, remarking, "Hell, the ditches still leak, don't they?"[3] Folklorist Ronald L. Ives suggested that genuine belief in the creature may have come from misinterpretations of paleontological finds; excavated specimens of the snail laxispira were sometimes known as "Devil's corkscrews" or "fossil augerinos".[3] Ives had also published a fictional short story based on tales of the augerino in 1938.[4] In 2008, a new helical fossil found in New Mexico was named Augerinoichnus helicoidalis in honor of the augerino.[5]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ a b c Carol Rose, Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend and Myth. Norton, 2001, pp. 30-31. (Google Books link)
- ^ Ernest W. Baughman, Type and Motif-Index of the Folktales of England and North America. Walter De Gruyter, 1966, p. 534. (Google Books link)
- ^ a b c Ronald L. Ives, "Folklore of Eastern Middle Park, Colorado". Journal of American Folklore 54 (1941), pp. 24-43, at pp. 29-30.
- ^ Ronald L. Ives, "The Augerino Oil Company". Coronet (Chicago), June 1938, pp. 53-57.
- ^ Nicholas J. Minter et al. "Augerinoichnus Helicoidalis, a New Helical Trace Fossil from the Nonmarine Permian of New Mexico". Journal of Paleontology 82:6 (2008), pp. 1201-1206.