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 laxispira specimens 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]