Monsters You Never Heard Of (7 page)

Another priest, Father Protesius Frickel, said he saw one of the monsters lying in the water near the bank. He got within about a dozen steps of the beast, but it did not move. "It's eyes," he wrote, "were as large as plates."

In addition to the many reports of giant water snake sightings, there are also supposed to have been two photographs. The first was taken in 1933. The group that took the photo said that they had killed the monster with a machine gun. Before it died, however, it lifted its head 30 feet in the air. When it fell it crushed bushes and trees. Four men were unable to lift the dead creature's head.

The second photograph was taken in 1948. This monster was said to have crawled ashore and tried to hide in an old fort. But it was killed, though it took 500 machine gun bullets to do the job. The dead snake was measured at 115 feet.

If the man in this drawing is six foot tall, imagine the length of the giant snake.

Where are these astonishing photographs? They were supposed to have been published in a newspaper in Rio de Janeiro. But no one seems to know which paper or where the original photos are.

Unless these photographs are found, or a skull, a skin, or a whole snake turns up, the giant water snake of the Amazon will just have to remain another of the world's elusive monsters.

As far as monsters go, the tazelworm really isn't too much. It is only supposed to be about two or three feet long. There are stories that the bite of the tazelworm is highly poisonous. It has been said that the creature is so poisonous that even its breath can kill you. According to legend, the tazelworm is very mean, and will attack anything that moves.

But even people who believe in the tazelworm do not believe all of these stories.

The most responsible beliefs about the tazelworm are this: It is a largish lizard, with two or four short legs. It may have a poisonous bite, but this is not absolutely certain. Far from being aggressive, the beast is very shy, though, like other animals, it will attack if cornered.

In fact, it is its very shyness that makes the tazelworm so interesting and, in a way, makes it a monster. For the tazelworm, if it exists at all, is a fairly large creature that has remained undetected by scientists, right in the middle of Europe. It would be the largest lizard in Europe, and one of the largest in the whole world.

If the tazelworm exists, it would be proof that large and unusual-looking animals can remain undetected in the modern world. If the tazelworm exists, it would strengthen the case for the existence of other monsters. After all, if the tazelworm could escape detection, so could other animals.

But does the tazelworm exist? That is the problem. As far as monsters go, the evidence for the tazelworm is very good.

Drawing of the tazelworm from a Bavarian hunting manual of 1836.

The creature is supposed to live in the valleys of the Swiss, Bavarian, and Austrian alps. It is known by many different names. "Tazelworm" is the most common. The name means "worm with feet." It has also been called a tunnel worm, a jumping worm, or a mountain stump. Of course, it is not a worm at all, but some sort of lizard.

Stories about the tazelworm are so common that it was included in an 1861 book on the animals of the Alps. The author said the creature was thick, from three to six feet long, had two short legs, and generally appeared before storms after a long dry spell.

The author added, "Many honest and respectable people swear that they have seen it with their own eyes." The author also said that in 1828 a Swiss peasant found a dead tazelworm. The creature's skeleton was sent to the University at Heidelberg, in Germany. But whether it arrived or not, no one seems to know, for all trace of the skeleton was lost.

The tazelworm as shown in an 1841 Swiss almanac.

In the 1930s a scientific society and some local newspapers put out a call for people who had seen the beast. More than sixty witnesses stepped forward. In general, the witnesses agreed as to the size and shape of what they had seen. Some said the thing had four very tiny legs, while others said it had no back legs at all. (Two-legged lizards are not unknown.) Most of the witnesses said it had scales, and hissed like a snake. A few said that it was able to jump two or three yards. How it was able to accomplish this with tiny legs, or no back legs at all, was not explained.

One hunter said he saw the thing in 1909. Knowing that it was supposed to be poisonous, he approached with great caution. Suddenly, the beast jumped at him. He drew his hunting knife and tried to stab it, but the creature's scales were so thick that the blade would barely penetrate. After a couple of attacks the tazelworm retreated into a hole in the ground. The stunned hunter was not able to find it again.

An Austrian schoolteacher was doing a little mountain climbing in April, 1929. He stopped for a moment to rest and saw what he called a "snake-like animal" sprawled out on the ground.

"It did not move," he said, "but kept staring at me with its remarkably large eyes. I know every one of our animals at first glance and knew that I faced one that is unknown to science, the tazelworm. Excited, joyful, but at the same time somewhat fearful, I tried to grab the animal but I was too late."

For a rather stumpy looking animal, the tazelworm moved with remarkable speed. It disappeared down a hole in the ground. The disappointed schoolteacher remarked, "I am certain that it was not my imagination that led me see the animal, but that I observed with a clear head."

So another chance to prove the existence of the tazelworm skipped or slithered away. In 1934, a Swiss photographer said he snapped a picture of the beast. The picture was published in the newspapers, but frankly it looks phony.

The animal has been so hard to catch that there are many skeptics who say that it does not exist at all. They say that perhaps the people are seeing something else. One suggestion was that people might be seeing a badger that had some kind of skin condition that made it hairless and scaly looking. Badgers live in holes in the ground. They have very short legs, and can make hissing sounds. Usually badgers hide, but they can become very aggressive when they think they are being threatened.

Nonsense, say the witnesses. They know the difference between a strange-looking lizard and a bald badger.

So the argument goes on. It will go on until someone actually catches a tazelworm, or until no one reports seeing a tazelworm for so many years that people forget about it.

The same kind of argument goes on about other monsters as well.

Is someone or something going around the country killing cows and sheep, and then cutting them up?

There are a lot of people who think so.

The so-called cattle mutilation mystery is one of the goriest, and most discussed, mysteries in America today. There have been several conferences on the subject. There is an organization devoted to solving it. There is even a magazine about the cattle mutilation mystery.

Current interest in the subject began in 1974 in Nebraska and South Dakota. Ranchers would find some of their cattle dead on the range. There was no obvious cause of death. Worse yet, parts of the animal might be missing. There were no footprints or other evidence to hint at what had happened or why.

There was a real panic on the ranches. Ranchers began patrolling their ranges at night with guns. They wanted to catch whoever or whatever was responsible. They never caught anything; they never even saw anything.

The police were called in. So were veterinarians. Some veterinarians said that there was really no mystery at all. The cattle, they said, had died natural deaths. Cattle, like other living things, die for a variety of reasons. There was no evidence they had been specially killed. What about the mutilations'? The veterinarians said that small predatory animals like weasels might have gotten to the dead animals. These animals were so small and light that they would leave no footprints.

Cattle rustlers might also account for some of the deaths. Most people think that cattle rustling is only a part of the Old West. This isn't true. With the price of beef as high as it is, stealing cattle has become a very profitable business.

Still another possibility is that some of the ranchers might be killing or mutilating their own cattle. They might do this for the insurance money. Insurance companies will pay for cattle that die accidental deaths, but not for cattle that die natural deaths.

These possible explanations calmed the fears of the Nebraska and South Dakota ranchers. The scare died away after a few months. But since then cattle mutilation scares have cropped up in Texas, Arizona, and elsewhere.

The story is not a new one. People have been collecting accounts of mysterious cattle deaths for many years. Reports of similar incidents have come from many other countries, particularly Great Britain.

In addition to the ordinary explanations, often far stranger explanations have been offered for the mysterious deaths. One is that the animals have been killed by some kind of Devil's cult. It has been suggested that killing cattle is part of the ritual.

UFOs have often been blamed as the source of the phantom cattle killers. Why would creatures from other planets want to go around killing earthly cattle? No one has any reasonable suggestions. But people like to lump mysteries together, even if they have nothing to do with one another.

And then there is the monster explanation. There have been some vague reports that a monster has been seen in areas where the killings have taken place. In Nebraska and South Dakota it was called "the Thing." It was supposed to be a two-legged Bigfoot-like creature.

Now we must admit that most monster reports are hard to pin down. But these reports were even more difficult to check than most. No one seemed to know exactly who had seen "the Thing," or when or exactly where. There just seemed to be sort of a general feeling that a monster of some kind must be responsible, and no one really saw anything.

But what if the mysterious cattle killing monster was invisible? This explanation has been seriously suggested several times. And some people even say that there is evidence of the existence of an invisible monster.

One of the strangest, and spookiest, invisible monster stories appeared in the December, 1977, issue of
Fate
magazine. It is about what is supposed to have happened on two small farms located in a northern Michigan game preserve. The account was written by Bradley Earl Ayers, who had visited the farms and talked to the witnesses.

The farmers were given the names Art Dahl and Henry Dubois, though these were not their real names.

The trouble seemed to begin on the Dubois farm in 1971. A calf was mysteriously killed. No one thought too much of it. There are bears, and other large animals, in the area. They might have been responsible. Still, no one found any tracks.

Over the next few years there were a few more odd incidents. At first, no one connected them. Then in 1976 several of Dubois' pigs were killed. Whatever had killed them seemed to be enormously strong.