Secrets live in our area. Probably such places. Transbaikal. They say that Baikal is 25 million years old. But who counted them? This is also a mystery. The biggest. And little secrets live around her …
Then suddenly something will appear over the small, forgotten by God village of Shamanka and, having made a mess, will disappear. And the local residents, who have never heard such a word as UFO, will tell how a saucer hung over houses at an altitude of about two hundred meters. She fumbled with her beams on the ground, illuminating houses, trees, wandering home from pastures and people pouring out into the street.
She disappeared just as she had appeared - suddenly. And the villagers who returned home with bitterness discovered burnt out refrigerators, televisions and, what is most annoying, separators. How do you process milk now?
Either hunters, resting during the squirrel in the winter quarters, hear a sled approaching at midnight, creaking in the snow with runners. A peasant gets out of the sleigh, groaning, and begins to unharness the horse.
Hunter Viktor Larionov. It was invisible people who came to his winter quarters.
At the same time, he mercilessly scolds the animal for something. This continues for five, ten minutes, half an hour. Finally, one of the hunters gets off the trestle bed and goes out into the street to help the unlucky driver and invite him to drink some tea that has not cooled down even after dinner. But outside, to his amazement, he does not find anyone except the silence of the night and the pristine white, untouched by anything, the snow that has fallen since the evening.
And then the car drivers, hurrying to get home to the village of Khankhino before dark, notice that over the Barguzinsky ridge, opposite the eternal mistress of the night sky - the Moon, a huge red ball is insolently located. Hanging like this for some time over the heads of the northerners, the ball silently disappeared into the evening sky. And the northerners went home to guess what it was and what will happen now.
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Here, the inhabitants of the village of Sakhuli will tell you how in the foothill zone of the same Barguzinsky ridge at an altitude of about a thousand meters, lights wander in the taiga in winter, as if a car is looking for a way out of the forest thicket. But what kind of cars are there, where there were no roads, and the slope of the mountain surface is 60-70 degrees?
There are many interesting and incomprehensible things here. Local residents are philosophical about this. So it is necessary. Therefore, no, no, yes, and you will come across a bush by the road, decorated with multi-colored rags tied to branches, under which coins that have darkened with time are densely scattered. This is a tribute to abo - the owner of this area. It is he who is credited with all the mysteries that take place here.
All this people living here have been seeing for a long time, but I want to tell a story that happened in these parts last year.
My old friend, the best hunter in this area, Valera Zuleyan, told it to me. Yes Yes. In these wild, northern lands, where Buryats and Evenks, or, in the local language, Orochons, hunted for centuries, the Armenian became the best hunter. Once upon a time, he came here in a sabbat brigade to build something, fell in love with a big-eyed northerner named Olga and stayed here forever.
Since then, having fallen in love, besides Olga, also the Barguzin taiga, he walked it all along and across, studied the habits of running, swimming and flying animals and the deceit of the local nature, adopted all their skills from local hunters and became a great hunter himself.
A serious man, sane and leading an absolutely sober way of life, Valera, during the story, all the time tried to determine whether I believe him, whether there is even the slightest shadow of doubt on my face. But I knew Valera for a long time, and therefore I listened spellbound, without interrupting and catching his every word.
Here is how it was
Last summer, Valera Zuleyan, together with professional hunters like him, decided to go fishing on Lake Gulinga. This lake is located, if you look to the north, behind a high pass and endless maria, in the mountains. You can get to it either by air in a helicopter or off-road in an all-terrain vehicle. For this reason, there are no people there, but there is a myriad of fish in Guling: grayling, perch, tench, burbot. Reindeer, red deer, elk-elders roam around. In a word - a space for fishermen and hunters.
Having pretty much worn out on the road, the taiga dwellers reached the banks of the Gulinga in the evening.
Deciding not to waste time, they, despite the fatigue, went about their usual business. Someone lit a fire and cooked dinner, someone took apart the nets and pumped up a rubber boat. And Valera decided to go check the salt licks. See which of the inhabitants there left their mark near the hole gnawed out over the years in the earth rich in natural salt.
Walking there, by local standards, was a little - just a couple of hours. Having found a lot of small and large forages of horns and hooves, the hunter decided to stay here until morning. After sitting on a storage shed built on a tree knows what time all night, chilled to the bones and not getting anyone, Valera rushed to the camp with agility, where, according to his comprehension, a kettle with tea was already boiling with might and main and the fish caught during the night was fried on the scabbard. However, having got out of the taiga wilds on the windswept shore of the lake, he found that the long-awaited breakfast was not there, and the whole team was huddled on the shore and excitedly discussing something.
It turns out that when, waking up in the morning, the fishermen swam to check the net set in the evening, it was not there. Since it is considered a grave sin to steal gear in these parts, they were completely at a loss. They could not confuse the place - they are all experienced people and familiar places, but the fact remained the fact: an empty two-liter beer bottle, which was tied to the net as a float, was not visible on the surface of the lake.
While the fishermen looked around in confusion, a familiar bottle suddenly emerged far from where they were. This did not cause any joy, because there were questions. The first question is: how could a wet net with sinkers and an impressive anchor stone travel so far? The second question is: what force carried the fishing net with an empty bottle to the depths, which is very difficult to immerse in the water when sealed, and it emerges as soon as you release it?
Since there were no answers to these questions, the company decided to wait for Valera and decide together what to do. Valera did not think long. And the fishermen's motorboat confidently headed for the distant shore, where a bottle was seen jumping on the waves through binoculars. Come over. Risk, of course, is a noble business, but still a risk. Therefore, they decided not to choose the network, but to tow it to the camp.
No sooner said than done. They tied one of the ends of the bowstring, on which the net was attached, to the stern of the boat and lay down on the return course. The boat was running hard, howling at high revs. It's clear - there, go, and fish, and garbage, anchor again. But suddenly, about a hundred and fifty meters from the shore, the boat seemed to have thrown off an unbearable burden. Startled, she went much more fun. "The network has come off," the thought flashed. But she trailed after, as before.
We approached the shore, chose a net and gasped. What was not there. The cells were literally studded with fish. Large, as if on pick, scaly bodies sat tightly over the area of the net. But there was also enough garbage. There are snags, mud, seaweed, and even stones, not counting the anchor. The net went along the bottom. But this was not what caused the general amazement. In the middle of the net a circle a meter and a half in diameter made of semi-digested fish formed. Yes, they were the same perches, links, grayling, but they did not play in the sun with all the colors of the rainbow, like their neighbors around. They were half-decayed under the influence of someone's powerful stomach.
The fishermen figured it out. It turns out that some unknown inhabitant of the lake spotted an easy prey and swallowed or sucked in the fish along with the net. Then, along with the net and its contents, he sailed to another place to digest the prey. But what size should this creature be?
Then, after returning home, Valera Zuleyan shoveled the entire Internet and, on reflection, decided that it was a huge catfish. He read somewhere that they can weigh up to 290 kg. But, continuing to remain a sane person (well, he did not see, he didn’t see any catfish then!), Valera called this beast in his own way - gulingasaurus.
And here's another thing. When the fishermen were returning home from Lake Gulinga, one of them, who had been silent all the way, suddenly burst out with a story about how last year at the same place someone unknown stole his nets. He never told anyone about this. And of course, he was alone, there is no one to confirm. I was afraid they would laugh.
Nikolay ROGALEV, Ulan-Ude