{{Short description|Legendary creature in US lumberjack and ranching folktales}} The '''augerino''' is a legendary creature present in the folk tales of lumberjack and ranching communities in the western United States.<ref name=rose>Carol Rose, ''Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend and Myth''. Norton, 2001, pp. 30-31. ([https://books.google.com/books?id=GKrACS_n86wC&dq=augerino&pg=PA30 Google Books link])</ref> Tales of the augerino described it as a subterranean creature which inhabited the drier regions of Colorado.<ref name=rose/> 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,<ref>Ernest W. Baughman, ''Type and Motif-Index of the Folktales of England and North America''. Walter De Gruyter, 1966, p. 534. ([https://books.google.com/books?id=uk-W8g_68b8C&dq=augerino&pg=PA534 Google Books link])</ref> though tales differ on the exact physical description of the creature.<ref name=rose/> 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.<ref name=ives>Ronald L. Ives, "Folklore of Eastern Middle Park, Colorado". ''Journal of American Folklore'' 54 (1941), pp. 24-43, at pp. 29-30.</ref> Some residents apparently believed the creature was authentic, remarking, "Hell, the ditches still leak, don't they?"<ref name=ives/> 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".<ref name=ives/> Ives had also published a fictional short story based on tales of the augerino in 1938.<ref>Ronald L. Ives, "The Augerino Oil Company". ''Coronet'' (Chicago), June 1938, pp. 53-57.</ref> In 2008, a new helical fossil found in New Mexico was named ''Augerinoichnus helicoidalis'' in honor of the augerino.<ref>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.</ref>
==See also== *Palaeocastor
==References== {{reflist}}
Category:American legendary creatures Category:Culture of Colorado Category:Folklore of Colorado