Feeding Frenzy: Summer Series by Jennifer Weigel, Chapter 2
Last time on Feeding Frenzy…
The motel room seemed decent enough. It was clean, although the air had a dank, stale quality about it. There were no lingering cigarette fumes, despite the fact that it had once been a smoking room. The curtains were drawn and the early evening sunlight filtered in, reflecting off flecks of dust in the air to a hazy yellow fog. Lucille plopped her weary self on the bed, clutching her purse, and gazed out the window. The sun had just begun to set and a sinister shadow started to creep over the town.
“This is ridiculous,” she said, trying to calm her racing heart. Trying not to think about the vacant eyed mechanic or the large, graying woman at the front desk. “You’re just seeing things. You need a bite to eat.”
The sun had begun to sink further behind the horizon when Lucille closed the curtains, flicked on the lamp, and left the motel room. She locked it and briefly contemplated going into town for supper. But it was still too creepy, especially with the first hint of night’s shadows lingering over the derelict town like dark, outstretched fingers. And she didn’t recall passing anyplace that looked like it would have anything to eat. She wasn’t sure she wanted to walk that far in the dark just to find out, and she certainly didn’t want to call for a ride. She wandered around to the back of the office, to a small open room labeled VENDING between the office and Room 1.
The room was bathed in sickly green light as a fluorescent hummed above. The vending machine sat with its back towards the curtainless window facing the decrepit town. Lucille stared into the depths of the metal springs, contemplating whether to get a probably stale pack of five powdered donuts or a bag of Cheez-Ums. A flash of movement caught her peripheral vision as she dug around in the depths of her handbag. She glanced out the window.
A number of ghostly looking figures passed in the dusk, all with the same dark, empty pools for eyes that seemed to absorb light and hope like black holes into some alien abyss. She recognized two of them: Tom Jones, still wearing his oil-stained powder blue uniform, and the large heavily made-up desk clerk who had checked her in. There was also a thick bearded man whose graying black beard seemed to both accentuate and hide his unusually thick and angled jawline, a taller older man whose easygoing agility surprised her due to his frail-looking countenance, and a balding diminutive hunchback.
The setting sun accentuated their disheveled facades as Lucille hid behind the snack machine, fixated on them. The others were even more distant than Tom and the woman she had already encountered, their hollow stares focused dead ahead as they wove through one another in an odd dance, like they were swimming through the air. Even though Lucille was certain that they hadn’t seen her, they passed the vending room slowly and rhythmically, as if cued in to her presence. And then, all at once, they wandered away disinterested. Lucille dashed to her room without anything to eat or drink and bolted the door from within.
Suddenly the most terrifying scream sounded from the outdoors. Lucille slid to the window and peeked around the drab curtain to see the mob of ghostly figures had grown tighter and was thrashing and flailing about. They were just at the periphery, at the edge of the parking area. She hadn’t realized that they had come so close to her room after she had lost track of them. There was something in their midst, brown and cumbersome. The shape was hard to make out, maybe a deer, or a donkey, or a small horse or cow. They circled it in unison, as if sizing it up and preparing their next move.
In a flash, the older man rushed forward, head butting the creature. It struck back with a blow to his head, a jagged hoof springing out of nowhere. Blood pooled all too briefly at the site where hoof had met flesh before fading and being reabsorbed into the man’s forehead. His ashen flesh seemed to close over the spot, refocusing the blood to a throbbing, pulsing vein that protruded from its midst. How was he not taken down? A blow like that should have felled him, especially at his age… Lucille fixated on him as he stood staring ahead, motionless, as if an hourglass spinning through its recalculating sequence begged for more time to process what had just happened. All at once, his eyes grew wide and pooled black again as he lurched his head to the side. He leapt in a coolly calculated strike and struck the creature again, this time in the ribs. It fell to its side as he bowled it over.
Lucille watched in horror, mouth agape, as she saw Tom Jones’ black eyes grow wide and bright as he descended upon the fallen brown form amidst the mob. His jaw seemed to unhinge itself as he leapt into the fray. The others followed suit until soon there was a writhing mass of pallid grey flesh and tattered old clothes engulfing whatever was in their midst. Lucille’s heart sank in her chest like a dead weight, filled with dread and racing with fear. She watched Tom emerge from the writhing mass of bodies with what appeared to be blood dripping down his mouth and onto his shirt. He pushed his hand to the back of his neck and cracked his jaw back into place before he looked up, his eyes returning to the hollow and distant black they had been when he first laid eyes on her. She shrank back into the room as his gaze turned to meet hers before he brushed himself off and sauntered away.
And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
So what better follow up to Invisibles Among Us in Nightmarish Nature than Monstrous Mimicry? Further exploring the leaps that critters will go to in order to eat and not be eaten. This time we’re focusing on those creatures that want to intentionally be mistaken for one another.
Insects Pretending to Be Insects
This is a pretty common subgroup in the mimicry set. Featuring such celebrities as the Viceroy Butterfly, which looks an awful lot like the Monarch. Why? Because everyone knows Monarch Butterflies taste nasty and cause indigestion. Duh? Though it appears the Viceroy took further cues from this and is not all that tasty in its own right either. Dual reinforcement is totally the way to go – it tells predators not to eat the yucky butterflies regardless. But some bugs go a bit further in this, imitating one another to seek out food or protection. Various wasps, spiders, beetles, and even some caterpillars impersonate ants for access to their nest or because ants aren’t as appetizing as their buggy counterparts to much of anything outside of the myrmecophagous crowd (as shared before, here’s a fun diversion with True Facts if you have no idea), though some also have nefarious plans in mind. And similarly, the female photoris fireflies imitate other firefly signals luring smaller males to try to mate with them where they are instead eaten.
Kind of Weird Mimicry: Insects Pretending to Be Animals
Moths are pretty tasty, as far as many birds and small mammals are concerned, so several of them find ways to appear less appetizing. Using mimicry in their larval form, they may try to look specifically like bird scat or even like snakes to drive away predators, with elaborate displays designed to reinforce their fakir statuses. And once they emerge as moths, they continue these trends, with different species flashing eye spots to look like owls, snakes, cats, and a myriad of other animals most of their predators don’t want to tangle with. But other insects pretend to be larger animals too, with some beetles and others producing noises often associated with predator, typically towards the same end – to deter those who might otherwise eat them.
Animals Pretending to Be Animals
Similarly some animals will mimic others. Snakes may resemble one other, as seen in the Milk versus King versus Coral Snakes and the popular rhyme, Red with Black is safe for Jack or venom lack, but Red with Yellow kills a fellow for all that it isn’t 100% accurate on the Red-Yellow end (better to err on the side of caution than not – so assume they are deadly). Fish and octopuses will imitate other fish for protection status or to conceal opportunistic predatory behaviors. And lots of animals will mimic the sounds others make, though Lyrebirds tend to take the cake in this, incorporating the vocalizations into mating rituals and more.
Really Weird Mimicry: Animals Pretending to Be Insects
Some of the weirdest mimicry comes out in animals pretending to be insects or small fish, where a predator will flick its strangely formed tongue that looks like a fish or water nymph to draw in more tiny critters that feel safe with their own, only to find themselves snapped up as dinner. Snapping turtles are notorious for this, disguising themselves in the muck to make their big asses less obvious and reinforce the ruse. Even some snakes do this.
Weirder Still
Then there are things that pretend to be plants. Like orchid mantises. Or sea slugs that look like anemones (some of which eat anemones and have stingers to match). I mentioned a few of these in the Invisibles Among Us segment last time, because some are highly specialized to look like very specific things and others just aren’t. Essentially, nature loves to play dress up and be confusing and adaptive. It’s like Halloween year round. And who can really argue with that?
Here’s a fun video from Animalogic exploring some of these themes. And feel free to check out more Nightmarish Nature here.
Sometimes it pays not to be seen, especially if there are things that want to eat you or if you have to sneak up on things to eat them. So this time on Nightmarish Nature we’re going to look at some of the creatures known for being invisibles among us. Some of these critters engage in mimicry, intentionally looking like other specific things, but a lot of them engage in camouflage, just wanting to blend in. In this segment we’ll consider both but focus more on the latter.
Buggin’ Ya
Some of the most notable invisibles are masters of camouflage in the insect world… Moths and beetles that look like bark or dead leaves. Mantids and other insects that look like leaves or flowers. Those stick bugs and walking sticks that I’m not sure how to classify (are they some kind of weird relations to assassin bugs or their own thing?). And my personal favorite, Umbonia Crassicornis, a type of tree hopper better known as the thorn bug. And don’t even get me started on spiders and scorpions… You could come face to face with pretty much any of these critters while mucking around in your garden and be none the wiser for it unless their movement betrays their location or you happen to scan the area with a blacklight before you dig in. It’s jump scare central, for sure!
Leapin’ Lizards
Lizards and amphibians are also masters of disguise, often resembling their surroundings much like the insect world does. Chameleons are celebrated because of their ability to change color to match their surroundings, but there are several lizards that do this, just not to that extreme. Like anoles. Take a trip to Florida and you’ll soon find that you’re being stared at by a lizard you didn’t even know was there, seeing as how anoles are everywhere and get into everything (one recently startled my mother after making its home in a hallway decoration). You don’t even have to go to Florida, they range anywhere from Texas to North Carolina, and there are other lizards that range further north that do this as well.
Cunning Cats
All those coat patterns you see on cats and other ambush hunters aren’t just for show – the spots and stripes allow our feline friends to blend into their surroundings while on the prowl. Sneaky sneaky. This helps them to be the amazing hunting machines that they are. Assuming they don’t raise the bird alarm and draw attention to their whereabouts. Because birds do love to raise a stink when there’s a feline predator about, and we can’t say we blame them.
Aquatics
Then when you go underwater, you take it next level. Camouflage is taken up a notch with seahorses, nudibranchs, and more that look exactly like random flotsam. Some critters, such as Majoidea crabs, even decorate themselves with ocean debris to blend in. And octopuses are like underwater chameleons on steroids that also utilize their surroundings to create a sort of protective armor that blends in, like when they carry anything they can grab to protect their squishy selves when sharks are about. There are even true invisibles like shrimp, fish, and jellyfish that are actually clear except for their internal organs that don’t necessarily register with everything floating about underwater. Even whales can appear to come out of nowhere depending on your angle to them to start with!
If you’ve enjoyed this segment of Nightmarish Nature, feel free to check out some previous here:
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:
