Creature record / 1934
The Aare Gorge, near Meiringen. A photographer named Balkin framed what looked like a picturesque tree stump. The shutter was pressed. The stump began to move. In April 1935 the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung published the picture. A blurred animal about 80 cm long, with two front paws, a mouth like a shark and a nose like an ape. Switzerland, it seemed, had its own answer to Nessie. The magazine offered 1,000 Reichsmarks for a captured specimen, and adventurers headed for the Haslital. Nobody ever caught the Tatzelwurm. Sceptics doubted the photograph almost at once. The gorge kept the legend anyway.
Spring 1935. The Loch Ness craze of 1933 and 1934 was still fresh. In the Alps, an older story was waiting. Alpine folklore told of the Tatzelwurm, a stubby creature like a lizard or a worm with paws. In 1811 a schoolmaster named Heinrich reported one in the Guttannen valley, just up the Haslital from Innertkirchen.