Visions of the Mongolian Death Worm

Until today, I was unaware of the Mongolian Death Worm. I'm not sure how this critter evaded my attention all these years.

Seriously, shades of Shai-Hulud and Graboids, y'know?

Apparently inhabiting the same reality vs myth space as Yeti and Loch Ness Monster. the Mongolian Death Worm is often sighted but never actually documented.

Even more intriguing is the notation that "the Mongolian Death Worm was first referred to by American paleontologist Professor Roy Chapman Andrews (apparently the inspiration for the Indiana Jones character) in his book On the Trail of Ancient Man, in 1926."

What makes this all even more bizarre, to anyway, is that I stumbled across the oddity above this morning in the Beanworld Archives about a half hour before I read about the Death Worm on Digg.

The drawing is mounted on an 8 1/2 " x 13 .5" black mounting board. Rendered with markets on 360 Bienfang paper. No date on it but based on subject matter (peas and corn) and the materials, it possibly dates from the late '70s but more likely the early '80s. This is the sort of thing I did at work in advertising, while working on pest control ads and waiting for galleys to come from the typographers or PMTs to come back from the stat house. There was a lot of down time in those days!

Kinda weird that it echoes the description of the Death Worm -- “Every eyewitness account...describes exactly the same thing: a red-brown worm-like snake, approximately two feet long and two inches thick with no discernible head or back (tail).”