Variations: Macrostoma saxiperrumptus (Cox)
The greatest hazard of the Colorado mountains is not avalanches or bears, but rather the Slide-rock Bolter. This is a colossal creature the size of a whale. Its enormous mouth, something like that of a sculpin, goes behind its small eyes and ears, and drools copious amounts of thin grease from the corners. The flipper-tail is separated into grappling hooks, which allow the slide-rock bolter to cling to the top of a ridge or mountain.
Slide-rock bolters live where the slopes are steeper than 45°. They can wait for days until prey comes within reach – typically a clueless animal such as a tourist. When a slide-rock bolter spots a tourist, it releases its hook-tail and slides down the slope, lubricated by its grease secretion. It slides like a nightmarish toboggan, bulldozing trees and obstacles, snapping up the tourist, and, carried by momentum, traveling back up to the top of another slope. There it sinks its hooks in and goes back to waiting.
Guides have become increasingly reticent about leading treks through bolter country, as entire groups of tourists can be lost to the behemoths. Slide-rock bolters can be lured away with appropriate tourist decoys – scarecrows with Norfolk jackets, knee breeches, and Colorado guidebooks. One ranger near Ophir Peaks rigged such a tourist decoy with powder and blasting caps, luring in the bolter at Lizzard Head. The detonation scattered enough bolter flesh to feed local vultures for the rest of the season.
References
Cox, W. T. (1910) Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods with a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts. Judd and Detweiler, Washington D. C.
A Book of Creatures 
Is the fish motif your invention? I own Cox’s book & he doesn’t call it one.
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… what. I could have sworn Cox refers to it as a fish but re-reading the entry there’s no such thing. Must be the comparison to the sculpin that made me make that connection. See, that’s how mistakes are propagated and I’m part of the problem. Will fix immediately, thanks.
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I would argue that despite him never explicitly using the word ”fish”, his description quite clearly uses a ”fishy” lexical field (sculpin, flippers, not to mention its overall shape). You could even go as far as to interpret its name as a subtle (albeit a little far-fetched) reference to a species of Betta macrostoma. The absolute truth is that your illustration perfectly matches Cox’s description, as well as any others I could find. In the end, whether it be more ithchyic or cetaceous makes little difference, both fit a similar description from afar thanks to the wonders of evolutionary convergence, the process that has shaped this creature to be adapted to locomotion on a aqueous medium (even if it’s its own secretions rather than actual water) … I vote for keeping the illustration!
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I can still make it *look* fishy though right? 😦
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It’s very dapper 🙂
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I will be redrawing it soon though
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I thought it was always fish or whale-shaped.
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Most drawings I’ve seen depict it as a large whale or worm
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I can picture it going fast. Nice one.
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i LOVE the “fearsome critters”, theyre so cool!!
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I love how this fella exists just to make fun of tourists… and yet, imagine an animal the size of a micro bus sliding down towards you
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I love Fearsome Critters and I wish there was a series that utilized them.
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There’s “Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods” by Hal Johnson that re-imagines the creatures in a more “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” style, if you’re into that kind of thing. It also does away with Cox’s more unsavory material, which is always good.
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