Slide-Rock Bolter

Region: Mountains of Colorado

Lead Investigator: Agent 32

Last Updated: 13 May 2014

• Also known as: Macrostoma saxiperrumptus, or the Mountain Whale.
• Reported mostly in the late 1800s and early 1900s by lumberjacks.

Identification:

• Resembles a whale in size, shape, and general characteristics
• Large head with small eyes, huge mouth.
• Its split flipper tail acts as a hook, holding it to steep slopes.
• Attaches itself to a slope, waiting until prey wanders beneath it. It will then let go of the rocks, sliding down at a high velocity, and swallows its prey. Said to perfer large groups of tourists.

Location:

• Thought to reside only on very steep mountain sides, "where the slopes are greater than 45 degrees".
• Since they knock down large portions of forests while hunting, keep an eye out for places with many flattened trees.

How to Destroy:

"A forest ranger, whose district includes the rough country between Ophir Peaks and the Lizzard Head, conceived the bold idea of decoying a slide-rock bolter to its own destruction. A dummy tourist was rigged up with plaid Norfolk jacket, knee breeches, and a guide book to Colorado. It was then filled full of giant powder and fulminate caps and posted in a conspicuous place, where, sure enough, the next day it attracted the attention of a bolter which had been hanging for days on the slope of Lizzard Head. The resulting explosion flattened half the buildings in Rico, which were never rebuilt, and the surrounding hills fattened flocks of buzzards the rest of the summer."

Excerpt from 'Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods: With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts' by William Thomas Cox

Proposed Explanations

• Landslides
• Folklore meant to scare away tourists

Images

Illustration by Coert DuBois from 'Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods: With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts' by William Thomas Cox (1910)

Artist impression of the Slide-Rock Bolter

Other Resources

'Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods: With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts' by William Thomas Cox page 20-21

Slide-Rock Bolter (Mountain Whale)

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