Dealing with the Devil: October Series by Jennifer Weigel, Part 1
Here I am, kicking off a new series for October 2022 in celebration of fall. Last year, you were invited to join us for Total Monster Makeover. This year brings yet another adventure, this time hosted by none other than the Devil himself… Enjoy this short story and additions over the course of the month.
It was an uneventful autumnal Thursday. I was raking for the third time that season to clear the tendrils of brittle plant detritus that kept sidling over from my neighbor’s knee-deep leaf pile of a yard. A gaunt silhouette of a bearded man wandered by, walking a dapper white Westmoreland Terrier. The dog circled three times and pooped before proceeding to bury the evidence by flinging yet more leaves onto the steaming pile with rapid sweeping motions of his hind feet in a grandiose orchestrated dance. As the dog-walker bent over to scoop up his spoils, the dog stared at me intently and winked, amber eyes gleaming from behind his furry facade. It was not a friendly kind of a wink, mind you – more one of those somewhat sinister I-know-something-you-don’t winks. Then the dog opened its mouth and addressed me.
“My dear Jonathan Menkhir, it is a pleasure if I dare say so myself.”
Taken aback, I stared at the dog. The gaunt man stood unmoving like a statue, caught perpetually in his hunched position firmly gripping his unappealing prize, eyes staring unblinkingly ahead. The dog cocked its head to the left quizzically and spoke again.
“Surely you heard me, fellow Jonathan. What, have you never seen a talking dog before?” The Westie’s yellow teeth flashed an unnervingly wide toothy grin.
“You… you can talk…” I muttered, letting loose my grip on the rake handle. The rake fell to my side releasing a spurt of leaves upon its pillowed landing.
“Why yes, my dear lad, and so much more…” The dog’s eyes twinkled. “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Beelzebub Lord of the Flies, Abaddon the Destroyer, Lucifer the Shining One…”
I just stood there, motionless and unresponsive, soaking up my circumstances. I can’t believe I’m talking to a dog, I thought. The words the dog spoke fell haphazardly along the wayside of my mind because they were meaningless in comparison to the messenger, at least in that moment, and they didn’t fit my image of how the devil would appear.
“You would probably best know me as Satan.” The dog sat pointedly and smiled, eyes still fixated on me. He had a proper air about him and seemed almost noble but in a forced snake oil salesman kind of way. At least, insomuch as a Westmoreland Terrier could seem both gentlemanly and conniving.
I finally found my voice buried deep within my throat and coughed up a response. “Oh, OK, I guess. So what brings you to these parts, um, Satan?” It wasn’t the best-articulated thought, but given that I had suddenly found myself talking to a somewhat prim and proper small purebred dog claiming to be the devil, that wasn’t surprising.
The dog stood and wagged its tail. “I wanted to make you an offer, my dear Jonathan. ”
“I am not interested in bargaining with the likes of yourself, Satan,” I retorted, surprised by how clearly the words fell from my lips and how quickly I seemed to adjust to the fact that I was talking to the devil as a small white dog as if it were nothing extraordinary and this was just another mundane Thursday afternoon. I guess I was better rehearsed in this comeback than I’d expected, having neglected the faith in my adult years after leaving many of my childhood fears behind.
“Come now, I know your heart’s desire, and that would be to see your dear Chloe again.” The devil dog wagged his tail again. “I can make that happen, you know.”
Chloe, my mind flooded back to the love of my life, my high school sweetheart, my college pen pal, my beautiful bride who had died nearly two years ago due to complications with the pregnancy. We had met through theater, having played opposite one another in Fiddler and becoming inseparable after. We had only been married for a little over a year after finishing college and moving into this house together when she had become pregnant with our first child, a little girl we had planned to name Abilene. It should have been the happiest time of my life, but it had been ripped from me prematurely. There wasn’t a day that passed without my thoughts returning to my beloved Chloe, I missed her with all my heart and soul.
Seemingly reading my thoughts as they overflowed my eyelids and trickled down my face, the dog grinned again. “Why yes, dear Jonathan, you can be with your beloved Chloe again.” His tail wagged even more feverishly.
Shaking my head, I spoke. “No. That you cannot do. Do not tempt me with your lies.”
“My reputation is unearned, my dear fellow. I mean you no ill intent.” The devil dog cocked its head to the left again. “If you wish to see your dear Chloe again, all you need do is come with me.”
“What, to Hell?” I asked, offended at the mere implication that my precious Chloe was doomed to such a dreadful place. “What do you take me for?”
“Not to Hell, my dear Jonathan, to Purgatory,” the dog stated matter-of-factly. “It hasn’t been that long since her passing and the decision is still being weighed, as one might expect. We request your… input… on some matters.”
And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
So, now that it’s getting cold, here on Nightmarish Nature we’re going to talk about a different kind of terror – the starvation diet. It’s winter, and food is becoming ever scarcer, so many creatures will slow down to conserve energy. Let’s take this a step further to the sleep of the damned… But I’m not talking hibernation, or settling in for a sort of long winter nap version of seasonal affective disorder on steroids. No, I’m talking hummingbirds.
Sugar Rush
Hummingbirds are about the polar opposite of what you’d think of when you talk about inactivity. They’re more the picture-perfect speed demons. And yet, due to their crazy high metabolisms and constant need to refuel by consuming all the nectar and insects they can get their little beaks in or on, they have near death experiences on a regular basis. Even during the summer at night whenever the temperature falls too low. It’s like all their systems have to go offline for a bit just so they can survive.
Energy Suck
Essentially a hummingbird burns so much energy that he can die in less than eight hours of not eating. The little sugar daddy needs another fix just to keep going. This lifestyle is a far cry from the Energizer bunny. Essentially he has to enter a torpor state in sleep so he doesn’t succumb to his own starvation diet. Not every time, but when the temperature drops or food is scarce.
A hummingbird in torpor may, by all accounts, appear dead. He can be frozen in place, his tiny feet clasped rigidly around a branch as if rigor mortis has sunk in. He can be cold to the touch and unresponsive. He can face upwards, unmoving, breathing and heart rate slowed to near indiscernibility. He can even be hanging upside down, oblivious to the world. In fact, the hummer’s heart rate can reduce to almost one tenth of his waking state, and his temperature can drop by ~5o degrees Fahrenheit (~ 30 degrees Celsius).
Miracle Mavericks
Honestly, as shown in this article on Journey North, this ability to exercise such fine control over metabolic rate on a nightly cycle makes the hummingbirds more marvelous than terrifying, switching between cold- and warm-blooded. And they are very well-adapted to their eating regimens, especially given their diminutive size. But such is the cost of burning so much energy to keep going without much room to store fuel. Like I said, a strict starvation diet.
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
This time on Nightmarish Nature, in honor of Thanksgiving, we’re exploring scads of scat! And not just because of the aftermath of all that eating we’re going to be doing, given that everything that goes in must come out eventually. But because turkeys are weird.
But, how weird?
Apparently, the shape and size of a turkey’s poop can tell you the sex and age of the bird. Male and female birds poop different shaped turds, and bigger ones with age. Your poop can’t do that, we’re pretty sure. And no, we don’t want to check, even if it does come in a whole host of rainbow colors with all the dyes in our food nowadays. Keep your weird quirks to yourself.
Fecal Fetishes
Vultures have very acidic scat that helps to keep their feet and food clean of bacteria from hopping in and around dead things. Somehow, this doesn’t seem like a step up to us, but I guess if you’re a carrion crawler you take what you can get. At least you’d know where it’s been I suppose, and that’s more than you can say for some of your long dead food sources…
Rabbits must process their food twice in order to break down the grassy matter they digest (like cows chewing cud). And so they eat their own partially digested matter, the cecotropes they produce after the first digestion. This isn’t true poop per se, that fecal matter comes after second digestion, but it does work its way through the same way.
And that brings us to koalas. They are one of only a few mammals that can eat eucalyptus leaves (and are closely related to wombats, one of the other two). Koala offspring eat their mother’s pap, which is a specialized form of poop that allows the baby to transition from nursing milk to eating solid leaves. It is green, smeary, mushy, and can get everywhere. Just like you’d expect.
We aren’t exempt.
For all that we have learned to be poop averse, a lot of animals eat others’ scat and glean a lot of nutritional value from their detritus. It’s not just your dog raiding the cat litter box and then licking you in the face. And we humans have even fought wars over rights to seabird guano, which was used as a form of fertilizer in the late 1800s.
Anyway, that’s the scoop on poop for now. Maybe we’ll revisit this load later on, seeing as how there’s still plenty of content here.
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
Yeah yeah, the insects tend to get ALL the attention here on Nightmarish Nature. But honestly, this one takes the beefcake. It’s the New World Screwworm Fly, and it’s as terrifying as the name suggests. And they aren’t limited to the Americas, there is an Old World version as well, as they can be found pretty much anywhere tropical or seasonably suited.
Revolting Little Buggers
The Screwworm Fly is a parasitic fly larvae that burrows into its host to feed, named because it seems to screw deeper and deeper into the flesh over time. This process is called myiasis and do NOT look it up online, you WILL regret it. They blur those images out for very valid reasons, trust me (and not because of pornographic content). And these maggots will continue to burrow en masse, rather than staying put as a botfly larvae would.
Do Not Do an Image Search on Screwworm Myiasis, Like Seriously – You Will NEVER Unsee That
The female Screwworm fly lays her eggs on an open wound or orifice of her chosen host… And not just one egg or a couple of eggs, no – hundreds, even thousands of them. Let’s let that sink in a bit, shall we? Or screw in as it were. Although any warm-blooded animal is a prime target, cattle are a fly favorite, costing millions of head of cattle to this sick and disgusting horror annually. And if beef isn’t on the menu, Fido or even yourself might be.
The Great American Worm Wall
In fact, this particular feature here on Nightmarish Nature is so terrifying that the United States has made agreements with all of Central America, even including countries that do not generally share its interests, in order to create a “Great American Worm Wall” to prevent them from spreading back into the United States. I’m not going to go into all of the creepy and juicy details of this bizarre science fiction freak fact, you’ll just have to watch it here on Half As Interesting’s YouTube channel.
Essentially, the Worm Wall is a complicated byproduct of scientists studying radioactivity on the flies’ maturity as well as the flies’ sexual lives and using this information against them to nearly eradicate the species and banish it from much of its former range. So, Peter Parker, if you thought everyone was messing with your love life before, be glad you weren’t bitten by a radioactive Screwworm.
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
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