The Mongolian Death Worm

I have had some fairly lazy days lately. All collars are out, all hunting sites have been checked and I think that I have found a new area for collaring in the autumn. I don’t know why I haven’t thought about this place earlier – it is a valley crossing Tost where the mountain range is the narrowest. The snow leopards have a stretch of only about 3 km to cross the valley if they want to stick to steep mountains. During the five months that Tsagaan’s collar worked properly he crossed the valley 20 times!

I have checked the valley and found eight rocks with very fresh scent marks (urine). I am pretty sure that we will find the snow leopards if they try to cross the valley.

Now to the title of the post. A few days ago three Mongolians working for National Geographic came to camp. They were out to find information about “The Mongolian Death Worm”. At first I thought that I heard wrong but no, they were looking for a death worm and thought that perhaps I knew something about it. This Death Worm is supposed to be 40-80 cm long, brownish coloured and lives underground. Both the head and the tail resemble a big hole lined with big fangs – making the worm look like a pipe. With teeth.

The worm is also extremely poisonous and spit an acid poison that will kill a camel (or human) within minutes. To make matters worse, it has a bad temper. If one makes it angry the worm will change colour and turn red / blue. If it gets really angry it will scream like roaring thunder and then explode – spreading the poison through the air.

This all sounds a bit too good (or rather bad) to be true but apparently there are lots of stories about the worm and if National Geographic is making a documentary about it, I suppose that they believe that there is some truth behind the stories. As the only living witness I know of, Oyuna’s mother claims that she saw one when she was young.

Well, that’s it. No more fieldwork until I get a shotgun, some potassium or other substrate of high pH, and an umbrella (in tough cloth – preferably acid proof). I have packed to cope with an extreme climate but I wasn’t prepared for exploding Death Worms. And the cats can change the sand in their litter box themselves… there will be no more digging for me.