Ol' Modemac, that ol' codger, was asking about the mighty Prairie Squid. Stark didn't do too bad describing the act itself. However, there are MANY TYPES of prairie squids, and about HALF of them will hurt you VERY VERY MUCH if you have your way with 'em. And I don't believe that Clavister said ANYTHING about the BEAK. If you don't debeak those critters, you're... well, you just go ahead and try it.
The single most extensive descripitons of and paeans to the Squid are to be found on the early Hour of Slack tape, HoS #40, the all-squid show, which is mainly G.Gordon Gordon and myself discussing the biology, habitats, and the endangerment of the P.S. That show is $6.50 on cassette from the Foundation, and I would recommend it to anyone. It's one of the few that I've replayed on the show every year or so.
And then there're the Face Fucking Bats.
BUT MAN!!! Yesterday my kid showed me an article in the new DISCOVER science mag about a NEWLY DISCOVERED ANIMAL that makes the undebeaked squid and the FFBat look downright CUDDLY and MUNDANE by comparison. Indeed, when Xan told me about it, at first I didn't believe him. Then he showed me the reputable magazine... and it's still hard to believe. But get this:
A wildlife biologist named Aprile Pazzo was in the Antarctic studying penguins at a remotearea near the Ross Sea coast. She saw a group of penguins fleeing something in extreme agitation. Stampeding. She found one penguin that hadn't fled. "It was sinking into the ice as if into quicksan," she said. Somehow the ice had melted and the [penguin was waist deep in slush. Pazzo grabbed the struggling penguin and freed the bird -- and discovered a dozen small, pink, hairless molelike creatures had clamped their jaws onto its lower body. She caught one, but the others dropped off and disappeared into the icy slush.
She studied them for the next few months. She calls the strange new species HOTHEADED NAKED ICE BORERS. "They're repulsive," she says -- and there's a photo of one of their hideous fanged faces, PROOF that God is a MALIGNANT BEING. Adults are about rat-sized and have very high metabolic rates, with body temperatures of 110 degrees. They live in labyrinthine TUNNELS in the ICE; there is a huge buny plate on their foreheads, the skin laced with innumerable blood vessels. The monstrous creatures radiate intense heat through their hot plates, which they use to MELT TUNNELS IN THE ICE AND TO HUNT PENGUINS.
A pack of ice borers will cluster under a penguin and melt the ice and snow it's standing on. When the haples bird sinks down into the slush, the ice borers attack, dispatching it with bites from their mini-sabretooth-tiger-like incisors. They then carve it up and carry the flesh back to their foul ice burrows, leaving behind only webbed feet, a beak, and some feathers. Pazzo says they travel through the ice at a surprising speed, "much faster than a penguin can waddle."
Pazzo suspects that the heroic polar explorer Philippe Poisson, who disappeared in this region without a trace in 1837, may have fallen prey to a pack of ice borers. An emperor penguin can be 4 feet high; Poisson was 5'6".
((End of article I largely retyped from the DISCOVER mag. I shortened it a little and added adjectives.))
I know, I know; it HAS to be a joke. But I don't think it is. DISCOVER doesn't go in for haoxes and there's a photo of this disgusting little squinty-eyed, dome-headed wrinkly pink RAT-MOLE-THING. If this is for real, then the LORD GOD CREATOR has a far sicker sense of humor than even Sterno on a bad acid trip. I believe the story, myself. Nature has truly miraculous ways of helping her children adapt to a harsh environment, especially if there's penguin meat to be had. BUT CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT POOR LATE EXPLORER'S LAST SECONDS OF LIFE, as he found himself suddenly sinking into icy slush, his flesh being rent and torn by creatures that to him must have seemed like demonic piranhas from the bowels of HELL ITSELF?? WHEW!! TOUGH LUCK, DUDE!!
But then we must also consider the sexual POSSIBILITIES raised by these animals... no doubt there are people like Michael Jackson who could afford ICE SKATING RINKS full of these hellish beasts. The sports of the rich are many and varied and some are perhaps left best secrets of their practitioners...
That's the April DISCOVER if you don't believe me. The cover story: ALIENS ON THE BEACH! -- a story which features electron microscope photos of some of the SICKENING LOOKING, newly discovered teeny little animals that live in BEACH SAND. Some of these things will turn your stomach... like those pictures of the things that live in your eyelashes. Some of these things look like ARMORED PUSSY-DICK-MARTIANS, others like TUBE-WORM-DEVIL-ANKYLOSAURUSES. Thank God they're too small to see except in magazine photos.
While we're on the subject, I would highly recommend the NPR 4 part TV special, THE NATURE OF SEX, if it is ever rerun. Truly gut-wrenching footage of Vampire Bats fucking, Bonobo "chimps" going at it, sea cucumbers biting each others' dicks off so they can become females and lay eggs... lemma tell you, no SubGenius science fiction biologist could ever improve on the wonders of Nature. Maybe the show is rentable by now. If so, and if you haven't seen it, BOY do you have a Saturday night cut out for YOU.
Original file name: Re Prairie Squid/Ice Borer
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