Tatzelwurm

 Obligatory disclaimer: real life sucks. Now, that that is out of the way, everyone, let’s have a brief word about the tatzelwurm.

…What exactly is a tatzelwurm? That is a good question, as no one has a specific answer, or maybe everyone does. The first tatzelwurm depiction I saw had been from the 19th century or so; it depicted a black cat/snake ‘hybrid’ attacking a hog while some panicked people stood in the background. The swine looked monumental, a pinkish-white block of muscle and fat, and it clearly was the stronger beast out of the two. True, tatzelwurm might be venomous, but in RL, domestic slash feral swine eat… rattlesnakes, among other creatures, and it is doubtful that the tatzelwurm is more toxic than a rattlesnake is, even if it is real… so what the point is?

Well, first, I always felt that in a minute or two the swine would shake-off the cryptid, and launch its’ own counterattack, which would result in the cat/snake hybrid being badly outmatched here. The second, if the tatzelwurm is a cat/snake hybrid, then it isn’t real at all, right? …Yeah, about that. There is no standard depiction of this beast, period.

Leaving aside all the RPGs, which do not care if there is any basis behind a cryptid’s supposed existence; the tatzelwurm’s images go all over the place. There’s a snake with a pair of muscular forelegs, a critter with a body of a skinny lizard (with all four legs) and a head of a cat, albeit one with a crown, there’s a snake with a head of a mouse or a weasel, a fat lizard with a head of a rooster, (the basilisk, take two), and one from 1887, which makes it look like a skink. Wait, what?

That is a good question. Skinks are not cryptids; they are a group of RL lizards that are usually found elsewhere than Europe, though. In addition, the tatzelwurm is supposed to have only one pair of legs – the front one. Think the skullcrawlers from the latest Kaiju-verse, just much smaller, (but possibly venomous). Therefore, what is the point?

First, the venom aspect of the tatzelwurm might be the most suspect of it all – people, especially Europeans and their cultural colonial descendants, tend to associate venom with almost every reptile that isn’t a tortoise or a crocodile, (and there’s some justification, too). Leaving venom aside, the tatzelwurm abruptly looks like a snake-lizard hybrid, and a single pair of legs is quite acceptable. Why?

Because there are legless lizards and lizards with just a single pair of legs, aside from the regular four-legged types. The skinks in particular have short fat legs that can be easily overlooked if a person is frightened enough, and some species of skinks, when cornered, can put on quite a scary show, (though they usually lack the bite to match the bark). Otherwise, well, there are legless lizards, but tatzelwurms usually shown to have the front limbs, so what we are left with?

…There are the sirens, which are mythical monsters, yes, but also a group of North American salamanders that have no hind legs, but have external gills, which can be confused for a crest or a crown if seen suddenly. Still, there is no indication that sirens ever came to the Old World, (and their distribution in North America is quite limited), so we go back to reptiles.

There are lizards, (or lizard cousins, classification can be tricky), that have only front legs – the worm lizards. There are over 200 species of them, and they are found in Europe too, as well as in North America, for example. They are no more venomous than many other lizard species are, but as I said before, fear is a powerful magnifying glass, so it is quite possible that an unassuming reptile, a lizard or a lizard cousin, got transformed into a new version of the medieval basilisk that no one took serious in the 19th century – and that is what the tatzelwurm actually is.

End