austria

The Alpine Tatzelworm

During the summer of 1921, a poacher and a herder were hunting on the Hochfilzenalm mountain

in southern Austria. They discovered a strange animal resting on a rock watching them that

seemed to resemble a large gray worm about 2 or 3 feet long. The poacher decided to shoot the

creature but as he pointed the rifle at the creature, it leapt at them showing it's pair of short front

legs. Needless to say, the men fled.

This is one of countless reports on file describing a strange beast, or undiscovered species that

resembles a reptile or amphibian that lives in the Alps, Bavarian, and Austrian Alps in Central Europe. Local people call
the beast a tatzelworm, or clawed worm. A farmer in Palermo, Sicily in 1954, also described a creature similar to the
tatzelworm, except it had a cat-like head, with two front limbs and it was attacking a herd of his pigs. So this strange
creature might have an even bigger domain that it was originally thought. A scientific examination of the creature was
unfortunately missed in 1924, when two men in the Mur Valley discovered a partial skeleton of a four foot lizard that
resembled a tatzelworm. It was only looked at by a veterinary student, who suggested that it was the remains of a roe deer
carcass. This has been disputed ever since by its finders because of discrepancies between its features and those of
deer. After the examination by the student the skeleton was discarded without anyone else examining it. In the same area
that the skeleton was found, a 12 year old boy, was herding his sheep, and the boy encountered a live version of the
creature. Of course the boy was terrified.

The description given by the poacher and herdsman in 1921 fits that of most tatzelworms on record, with one exception.
There is a discrepancy of how many limbs the creature has. Some witnesses claim it has a single front pair, while other
say it has two pairs of small legs, while some even say it doesn't have any limbs. Some people like to compare the
creature to a skink, a lizard that comes in a few different forms, which include a legless version, and a version will very
small limbs. Although skinks do not grow up to two feet let alone four feet, some people think it is an undiscovered
species, more like the American Gila monster.