Category: Odd Bits

Odd Mythic Creatures

Many mythic creatures have worked their way into modern literature and especially movies throughout the years. Medusa with her stony glare, dragons galore, vampires, werewolves, sea serpents, and the occasional flying horse all have walked, flown, swam or slithered across the screen, the more cinematic, the better.

Many more haven’t made the cut, however (at least not yet). This may be due to their not being interesting enough, or not having shown up in entertainment mythology in a sufficiently popular movie. But many of these creatures do have potential.

One monster is the manticore, a man-eating creature from Persian (modern day Iran) mythology.

Manticore, man eating monster

Like many mythic beasts, it is an odd amalgamation of various animals. It has the head of a man with three sets of formidable teeth, the body of a lion and the tail of a scorpion. In some illustrations, like the one above, the tail is a bristle of poisonous spines which the creature can shoot like arrows. Later accounts placed it in India as by then Persia was well known enough so that scholars noted the decided lack of manticores in that land. In modern times, the manticore is sufficiently unfamiliar that some artists have erroneously given it a lion’s face. But this is a bizarre enough monster that it will surely make its way onto the big screen at some point, if it hasn’t already.

While fire-breathing dragons are a staple in many fantasy movies and tv series, the Chinese dragon is profoundly different.

chinese dragon or Loong

More correctly named the loong or lung, it is drastically different from the western dragon. Instead of fire, it is strongly associated with water and is considered a manifestation of chi, bringing good fortune, power and strength. It doesn’t waste time accumulating treasure or devouring virgins. It has no need for them. The loong can shapeshift as it wishes, from the size of a tiny caterpillar to as great as the universe itself, even on occasion, taking human form. It is often accompanied by a flaming pearl representing wisdom, spirituality, immortality and other valued attributes. While loongs are usually presented as beneficent, they do have their wrathful moments, deluging mortals who displease them with floods and violent storms. Hmmm, you know, this sounds familiar. If you’ve been watching the news, you no doubt noticed the nasty weather which has been hitting us lately. Maybe it’s time we got our act together and stop doing stuff to infuriate the loong.

Native American stories are replete with tales of various creatures,some friendly, some very dangerous. Among Cherokee people is the tale of the creature known as a nun’yunu’wi, literally translated as dressed in stone.

Nunyunuwi or cannibal monster

Humanoid in appearance, the nun’yunu’wi has sorcerous powers, among them a stone cane which the creature uses to locate prey, namely humans. Nearly unstoppable due to his arrow-proof stony skin, he does have one fatal weakness; a menstruating woman. One tale has a warrior running to warn his village after spotting an approaching nun’yunu’wi. The village elder locates seven menstruating women and lines them up along the road leading to their village. As the women are stark naked, there is no mistaking their condition. The nun’yunu’wi encounters each one, much to his horror, as he tries to near the village. Working like kryptonite, the women’s menstrual blood reduces this menace to utter helplessness so the villagers can destroy him.

One twist to this story which I find very interesting is that the nun’yunu’wi doesn’t seem to resent his destruction by the villagers. In fact, there’s no animosity, at all. He doesn’t curse them out or bewail his fate. While they set fire to a great pile of logs over him, he accepts it all philosophically and proceeds to teach them prayers and magic spells which can help them in day to day living. Once he is burnt to ashes, the people sweep away the ashes only to discover a lump of red paint and a magic stone, again which are used for their benefit. This tale reveals a striking difference in attitude from stories we might tell. There’s no abominable evil creature spewing hateful bile whereever it goes, no unredeemable nihilistic demon and no gleeful celebration over its death. Instead it’s just a very dangerous monster which, while it needs to be destroyed for the people’s safety, still can be helpful even in its dying moments and beyond.

Australia is also brimming with supernatural wonders of every kind. The local people speak of a being called a mimi, a kind of aboriginal fairy. It has a long, spindly fragile body and because it’s vulnerable to winds that could tear it to pieces, it lives in rock crevices.

Australian Mimi or fairy spirit

Native people tell how mimis lived on the land before aboriginal people came. They were and still are regarded as generally friendly and even playful, though they may get annoyed if you are disrespectful. It is said that the mimi taught the humans how to build fires, hunt kangaroos as well as showing them how to dance, sing and paint. Art depicting the wonderful wispy mimis can be found on many outcroppings and in artwork done by native peoples.

Another mysterious creature, found mainly in England but also in Europe as well, is the Black Dog. This spectral being, obviously in the form of a black dog, is often described in countless folktales.

Black Shuck or demonic dog

One form is the Black Shuck, a strange ferocious brute, a terrifying black dog with one eye. It’s said that if you meet it, it can be the worst of luck for you and may even presage your death. Arthur Conan Doyle used this creature as an inspiration for his Sherlock Holmes novel, Hound of the Baskervilles.

Many times these mysterious canines are seen along roadsides or near bridges. Sometimes the spectral hounds are white rather than black. But not all Black Dogs are evil however. Some have been known to guide lost travelers to safety. A good book to read about these spirit forms is Black Dog Folklore by Mark Norman

Interestingly the Black Dog has made its way to the Americas, apparently immigrating along with Europeans, spawning tales in both South and North America. An area called the Bridgewater Triangle, a section of land in southeastern Massachusetts noted for paranormal phenomenon has had sightings of the Black Dog along with countless other strange beings.

So what’s your favorite mythic creature?

Toys Of Yesteryear

Housecleaning and downsizing often resurrects items long in storage leaving you with the decision about whether to keep or donate to the rummage sale. Toys are a good example of this. For some, it’s easy. Dolls went quickly for me as I was never much a doll player, probably because they weren’t interactive. Barbie dolls were considered too pricey so I got the cheapie knock-offs. Those are long gone and not missed. The only doll that ever got an enthusiatic reponse from me was the Chatty Cathy doll.

Chatty Cathy doll

The one I got had a pull-ring in the back of her neck. Yank on it and she had a dozen or so sentences she would recite one at a time each time you pulled the string. This was pre-electronic tech so what she had inside her was basically a phonograph record. This worked great until I wore the darn thing out pulling on the string so many times. Sadly her voice degenerated to an unpleasant grinding sound and that was the end of Chatty Cathy. A pity since an intact Chatty Cathy with a good voice box commands a pretty decent price as a collectable vintage toy.

Another vintage toy I wish I still had was a little scooter I sat in and pushed around when I was a toddler. It looked like a zebra, with four wheels, a wooden tail and head painted like a zebra. The legs had coverings similar to the cores of paper towel rolls also zebra painted. An internet search has turned up nothing like what I remember. The closest I could come was this.

vintage child's scooter

Even this doesn’t quite look like it but it gives a rough idea of how it was shaped. I rode that thing incessantly around the house (I was about four or five but remember it quite clearly). It was a great way to burn up excess kid energy. It’s a wonder I didn’t wear ruts in the floor. I probably drove my parents totally crazy which may explain why it disappeared once I outgrew it. Off to a rummage sale (alas, *sniff*…).

At one time we had more than one Slinky toy about, but over the years something would happen to them. They would get bent or damaged in some way so they could no longer slink anymore. So those are gone as well.

vintage Slinky toy

Still, a suprising number of toys managed to withstand the attentions of both myself and my kid brother to survive to the present day and are definite keepers, not to be given away or sold. One was a little wooden pull toy put out by the Holgate Toy Company.

vintage pull toy

With sturdy wooden parts and a strong pull string, it’s still in good shape and would still be good entertainment for a small child. I also still have some wooden blocks of the same above design, probably put out by the same company. A few tinkertoys still survive and on my bookshelves I have a small plastic ferris wheel. I have no idea what toy set it came from but it still endures and will even spin if you push it with a finger.

plastic toy ferris wheel

There’s a vast menagerie of plastic dinosaurs, farm animals and various critters still present from many Christmas gifts over the years, enough so they could fill a toy zoo twice over.

plastic toy animals

But by far the most entertaining toy (and likely the most hazardous) was the Creepy Crawler Set. We had two versions, one which made bugs of various sorts and the other you could make weird looking critters which could fit together in any design you wanted. The set consisted of a electric heater, with metal form molds. Plastic goop stuff came in bottles and you would pour the goop into the molds and ‘cook’ them on the heaters producing all sorts of odd looking critters. Apparently these things were a lot more dangerous than I remember.

However, I don’t recall either my brother or I burning ourselves on the hot cooker or getting sick from the plastic fumes. We must have done the cooking in a well ventilated area because we both survived to tell the tale. And I still have a bagful of the plastic beasties. The cooker, molds and goop are long gone but the Crawlers survive in all their creepy glory.

creepy crawlers
more creepy crawlers

All of these will be sticking around for a while, because they bring back memories of a simpler time (or at least it seemed simpler). But that’s how housecleaning usually works. You can junk some stuff and shed nary a tear but some of it you just can’t bear to part with. That probably signifies what’s really important to you.

Can’t say for sure what the Creepy Crawlers signify, though.

Have a safe and happy winter.

The Saga Of the Cane Toad

cane toad

The cane toad, native to Central and South America, is a large warty toad, poisonous with big paratoid glands (the round spots located behind the eyes near the neck) which exude bufotoxin as a means of defense. They are prolific breeders, with a female often laying between 8000 to 25000 eggs embedded in long strings of jelly. Most of the tadpoles, which themselves are poisonous, usually die during the time they metamorphose to adults as this is the time when they lose their juvenile toxins and are defenseless until the adult paratoid glands develop. Their main enemies at this critical period are … well ….other young cane toads, who cheerfully devour their brethern.

Their voracious appetites and rapid reproduction caught the eyes of agriculturalists, hoping to find a ‘natural means’ of controlling crop pests. One place they were brought in, was Australia. In 1935, about a hundred toads were introduced, with the hopes they would have an impact on cane beetles, who were attacking sugar cane fields. Needless to say, things did not work out as was hoped.

One would think Australians would have learned their lesson with the debacle of the introduction of rabbits back in the nineteenth century.

rabbits in Australia

But evidently not. As with the European rabbit, with no natural enemies and an ideal environment, the toads did what their predecessors, the rabbits, did, which was reproduce like mad and spread like a bio-tsunami across the landscape. It’s hard to say what the Australians hate more now, rabbits or cane toads.

Efforts to control the exploding numbers of toads, now estimated to be 250,000,000, have been fruitless. The march of the toads seems relentless as they overrun not only ecosystems but human towns and cities, devouring anything smaller than themselves and poisoning inquisitive pets who lick or bite at them. Efforts to control them, ranging from introducing sterile males to compete with fertile males, using cane toad toxin to trigger cannibalism in tadpoles, or just bludgeoning the things to death with a hammer (illegal by the way) have born little fruit.

But a curious thing has been happening while humans have been pulling out their hair over their latest screw-up. It seems the local wildlife has begun a counter-offensive.

white ibis

Recently white ibises have been observed ‘playing’ with cane toads. The birds are often called ‘bin chickens’ by locals for their habit of foraging in trash cans. But this insulting nickname may get dropped in light of what’s happening. It turns out the birds weren’t playing, they were stressing the toads, forcing them to release their poison, then either wiping them on grass or rinsing them in a nearby water source. Then the ibises would eat the toads without ill effect.

And they are not the only ones who have stumbled on a way to devour the formerly inedible cane toad. A local species of crow has developed the simple expedient of flipping the toad on its back and tearing open the abdomen and eating the non-toxic internal organs. Rakali water rats have also mastered the trick of eating the toad without running afoul of its poison by using the same technique.

If this doesn’t heighten your respect for the intelligence of animals in figuring out how to do all this, then I don’t know what will. There must have been a hefty amount of experimentation, fueled by hunger, by the ibises, ravens and water rats, before hitting on the best method of getting a meal out of these unpleasant invaders. Bird brains indeed!

Food for thought, if you’ll pardon the expression.

Have a happy and peaceful New Year.

Saint Nicholas

Sugar and Spike

Having old comic books can serve as a doorway to old memories dating from childhood. You can’t get that from today’s magazines. Many comics nowadays are over-hyped, overly violent along with a generous dollop of overt sexuality. They are aimed at young adults rather than pre-adolescents as they often were when I was a child. Tied in with blockbuster movie franchises now, they are milked relentlessly for their money making capacities rather than fueling the fantasies of readers. Even the formerly innocuous Archie comics have developed a darker tone and the artwork has lost the charm of yesteryear, either the art looking amateurish or attempting to match the ‘realism’ of the major comics such as Marvel or DC. An advertisement splash for the Riverdale tv series on Netflix looks more like something for Children of The Corn, rather than the humorous teen-age hijinks of the fifties, sixties and seventies.

What a far cry from the bright, optimistic plotlines and artworks I can recall. Archie comics were always fun to read, not anything you needed worrying about getting nightmares from. Even DC and Marvel portrayed the heroes endlessly battling against villains and usually winning. If they didn’t win, all was not lost as you could count on a rematch between the good guys and the bad guys.

A favorite I can recall was an odd little comic series put out by DC comics, called Sugar and Spike.

Sugar and Spike babies

Written and drawn by Sheldon Mayer, it depicted the antics of a pair of toddlers name Sugar Plum and Cecil ‘Spike’ Wilson. When adults listened to the tots, all they heard was ‘Glx’ or ‘Blox’. But when Sugar and Spike spoke to each other or to other babies (both human and animal) they were perfectly articulate, speaking a baby language all their own. Sheldon modeled their mischief making on the behavior of his own toddler children, creating a delightfully clever off-kilter comic which was successfully published for many years.

Sheldon Mayer is also responsible for Superman being the well-known icon he is today.

Superman lifting a car

The story is that he came across Siegel and Shuster’s unsold Superman comic strip which delighted him enough, so he touted it towards his employer Max Gaines who finally took it up and got it published in the iconic Action #1 comic published in June 1938. The rest, naturally, is history.

Sheldon began illustrating Sugar and Spike in 1956 with the stipulation only he could write the stories and draw the mischievous toddlers, an arrangement that would never fly today in the present corporate environment. His quirky humor permeates the entire comic consistently throughout the series. He even signed his own artwork as can be seen in the corner of the lower right hand panel.

Sugar and Spike comic

Other characters were added, as time went on. Bernie the Brain, an infant super-genius, was one, allowing the kids an opportunity to play with his wacky inventions (and get into all sorts of trouble naturally), or provide explanations about the baffling behavior of the adults in their world. Their creator was consistently able to maintain the lighthearted plots without any loss of quality.

Sheldon continued producing his comics until cataracts forced him to stop for a time. By the time he had surgery to correct the issue, and resumed drawing, the industry had changed. While he continued drawing Sugar and Spike until his passing in 1991, these issues were published overseas, with only a few of the stories being reprinted in the USA. Arrgh! What a loss!

No one has been able to successfully replicate Sheldon’s work on Sugar and Spike, a product of his unique creativity and sense of humor. DC comics has recently produced an version of Sugar and Spike, showing them all grown up and running a very peculiar detective agency which “handles problems and mysteries that the superheroes can’t handle themselves”. Needless to say, all the original charm is gone, smothered under a distasteful layer of cynical edgy scripting.

I’ve long since read my few copies of the original Sugar and Spike to pieces many decades ago, so will be keeping an eye out at flea markets and yard sales in the hopes of acquiring back issues at a cheap price. These little gems are well worth the getting.

Hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving, or as Sugar and Spike would say; “Glyx, blox, snzx!”

Sugar and Spike trying to figure out Christmas tree