Swamp Auger

Also Known As: also swamp-auger; Latin joke-name Natator palustris var. perforens in Henry H. Tryon, 1939
Region/Culture: North America
Mythos: Urban Legends & Contemporary Folklore, Cryptids
Primary Type/Nature: Monsters and Beasts
Mythical Attributes: It bores neat holes with its head, in swamp mud after worms in the earlier telling and through the bottoms of boats in the later one.
Role in Mythos: It is a tall-tale animal of the northern woods, used by guides and woodsmen to explain away a hole in the ground or a leak in a boat to a newcomer who did not know better.
Relation to Humans: In Art Childs’ version it is harmless and only leaves a track and a hole for a guide to explain to a greenhorn. In Henry H. Tryon’s version it sinks boats on fresh-water lakes unless its snout is tickled or peppered, after which it plugs its own hole until the boat reaches shore.

A webbed print at the edge of a northern swamp, pressed into black mud that pulls at the boots, and beside it a small round hole going straight down. The man from the city bends over it. The guide purses his lips and takes his time before he answers. That, he says, is where a swamp auger has been.

The Swamp Auger has exactly two written sources, and they do not agree on what sort of animal it is. The first is Art Childs, whose illustrated newspaper column Yarns of the Big Woods ran in 1922 and again in 1925 and was later gathered into a small book under the imprint of Associated Editors of Chicago. A note printed with the stories says Childs had been a game warden in the woods of northern Wisconsin, and that he took his yarns from the old guides, who had invented them to account for strange tracks and weird noises to visitors from the cities. The second is Henry H. Tryon, whose Fearsome Critters, issued by the Idlewild Press at Cornwall, New York, in 1939 with drawings by Margaret R. Tryon, gives the creature a single paragraph on page 51.

Childs tells it as a scene rather than a description. A tenderfoot, hoarse with excitement, points at a webbed outline in the swampy ground and asks what made it. The guide drawls that a swamp-auger has passed this way: a great big bird, built on the order of a duck, with a bill like a corkscrew. It is a handy bill, too, because the bird bores straight down into the swamp for worms. And there, sure enough, is the little hole where it was boring. The whole animal lives inside that one exchange. It is a joke with a prop, and the prop is whatever hole happens to be lying in the mud.

Tryon moves it off the mud and onto open water, and arms it. His Swamp Auger, filed under the mock-scientific name Natator palustris var. perforens, lives in fresh-water lakes and is often mistaken for an old snag. It carries a swiveled proboscis specially suited to boring three-inch holes in the bottoms of boats, and it will keep boring unless stopped. A rowboat sits on still water at the end of the day, a grey stump of dead wood floating a few yards off. Then comes a faint grinding under the planks, and cold lake water begins to well up through a clean round hole.

The cure is the best part of the joke. Tickle the creature’s snout, or sprinkle it with cayenne pepper, and it sneezes violently, which Tryon says it hugely enjoys. Pleased with itself, it then holds its expectant nose tight in the hole, waiting for the next sneeze, and stays there until the boat can be beached. The animal that sinks the boat also corks it.

Set side by side, the two accounts share a name and a habit of drilling, and almost nothing else. Childs gives a duck-shaped bird with webbed feet feeding in a swamp. Tryon gives no bird at all, only a snag-like lake dweller with a snout, and for all its name he never puts it in a swamp. Neither man says how large it is, what colour, where it came from, or whether anyone ever caught one. Seventeen years separate the two books, and whether Tryon had seen Childs’ column is not on record. The creature is also missing from the earliest book of these animals, William T. Cox’s Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods (1910). Online retellings today tend to fuse the two versions into a single beast that is sometimes a bird and sometimes a fish, and a modern online edition of Childs has even supplied a Latin name, dated 2020, that Childs never wrote.

The genre explains the vagueness. Tryon dedicated his book to everyone who had held the bag on a snipe hunt, and he described how these animals were served up: two woodsmen trading solemn details and personal sightings, with a grave nod from the audience now and then, until the listener was convinced. A Swamp Auger is ideal material for that game. Nobody has to produce the animal. Every hole in the mud and every leak in a hull is already evidence.

Its gift is drilling, and each telling fits the tool to the job: a corkscrew bill for soft swamp ground, a swiveling snout for boat planks. Its disguise is stillness, since on a lake it passes for one more piece of floating deadwood. Its weakness sits at the same end of the body as its strength. The nose that bores the hole is sensitive to a feather or a pinch of pepper, and the pleasure of a good sneeze is enough to make it forget the work and pin itself in place. Neither account says how to kill one, and neither seems to think it necessary. A boat with a Swamp Auger jammed in its bottom floats well enough to reach shore.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Swamp Auger?

The Swamp Auger is a tall-tale creature of North American woods folklore, one of the fearsome critters told about by guides and lumberjacks. It appears in Art Childs’ newspaper column Yarns of the Big Woods (1922 and 1925) and in Henry H. Tryon’s book Fearsome Critters (1939). Both versions have it boring holes with its head.

Is the Swamp Auger a bird or a fish?

In Art Childs’ version the Swamp Auger is a big bird built like a duck, with webbed feet and a corkscrew bill. Henry H. Tryon does not call it a bird or a fish; he says only that it lives in fresh-water lakes, is often mistaken for an old snag, and has a swiveled proboscis. Modern online retellings often merge the two descriptions.

What does the Swamp Auger do to boats?

In Henry H. Tryon’s Fearsome Critters, the Swamp Auger bores three-inch holes in the bottoms of boats and keeps doing it unless stopped. In Art Childs’ earlier version it does not attack boats at all, and only bores into swamp mud to find worms.

How do you stop a Swamp Auger?

According to Henry H. Tryon, tickling the Swamp Auger’s snout or sprinkling it with cayenne pepper makes it sneeze violently, which it enjoys. It then holds its nose in the hole it has made, waiting to sneeze again, and so plugs the leak until the boat can be brought to shore.

Did people really believe in the Swamp Auger?

The Swamp Auger was a joke rather than a belief. A note printed with Art Childs’ stories says the old guides invented such yarns to explain strange tracks and noises to visitors from the cities, and Henry H. Tryon dedicated his collection to people who had been fooled on a snipe hunt.