Feeding Frenzy: Summer Series by Jennifer Weigel, Chapter 4
Last time on Feeding Frenzy…
When Lucille awoke, it was dusk. She woke with a start, jolting upright with a sinking feeling of dread as if she were being watched intently. This town seemed to have that effect though. The television was still on, a murmured noise in the background. Outside the wind echoed over a shuffling or rustling sound swirling around the hotel. A shadowy form swam past her window, edging closer and then briskly turning away. Lucille leapt out of the bed and ran to the door, heart racing. Her heart fluttered in her chest. A key clinked in the lock outside.
She slid into the space behind where the door would open as the key turned and the door swung a little until it was caught on the dead bolt. She peered through the crack in the door as a pallid grayish nose drew a few deep sniffs into the room before retreating. The nose returned for a long breath as Lucille slammed her hip into the door, jarring it shut. Something outside staggered backwards. The shadows flickering just beyond the window faded away.
Lucille listened to her blood pulsing through her ears and her heart pounding in her chest for what seemed like several minutes for all that she knew it was probably only a few seconds. Eventually she slowly crept to the curtain, eased her way to the slightest edge of the dusty drab fabric, and crouched down low. She parted the drapes just enough to look out. There were five figures shuffling around the parking lot, similar in appearance to the night before with pallid skin and hollow black eyes darting to and fro as if in some sort of synchronized dance. They would occasionally bump into one another only to separate and trail off again. She couldn’t make out whom they were, but she caught a flash of a black-grey beard, a glimpse of ruby lipstick, a trail of a well-worn stained light blue uniform…
The figures retreated out of sight to the left of her field of vision. Lucille slowly crept to the door and opened it, just a notch to see out. Nothing. She flung it open, her heart leaping out of her chest as the door swung wide on its hinges parting to reveal the rust colored sky of the setting sun enveloping the distant horizon. There was no one there.
Lucille closed the door behind her. She shot briskly to VENDING between Room 1 and the office, ducked inside, and peered out that window at the parking lot. She watched in horror as the shadow figures returned, circling one another in the parking lot and gliding along the earth. Their black eyes glimmered with far away intent, their noses twitched and twirled in the night sky as if they were pigs sniffing out truffles. They slunk over to Lucille’s room. The tall one tried the key in the lock again, it was the older man from breakfast, the blue-grey vein in his head still pulsing, visible even from that distance. How had he not been felled by that creature after that blow, and what came of all that blood? He was accompanied by the desk clerk and the bearded man from breakfast, as well as Tom Jones the mechanic and a small balding hunchbacked man that Lucille didn’t recognize who straggled behind the others a bit, snuffling about.
“I know y’all’re in there, missy,” the bearded man directed at the door as he sidled past the tall man and rubbed his shoulder against the frame. “Ya cain’t hide…” His coy smile revealed rows of sharp pointed teeth. The teeth were all the more apparent glistening in stark contrast to his full dark greying beard. The tall man snapped a quick jolting smirk at him, driving him back to catch his footing as the desk clerk squirmed her way between them as if to break up a longstanding childhood rivalry over who could finger their way over their half of the middle back seat. Tom Jones broke free of the group, raising his head high and deeply inhaling the stale night air. He wandered off the parking lot, down the shallow slope and towards the ravine.
The others hovered at the door a bit before they opened it, sniffing at the air with their full throbbing nostrils. Their eyes twinkled black and starry as if hyper-focused on their quarry. “She ain’t here,” the desk clerk exclaimed, rapping the bearded man in the back of the head hard when he bumped into her. The bearded man slinked aside.
The desk clerk’s eyes grew small again and pointedly bored holes into him. She lifted her heavy head and took a deep breath. She focused a bit and then her eyes grew wide again and she began to snake up the path towards the vending room. Lucille shrunk into herself, still fixated on the window, as she watched them slowly approach, weaving up and down the path.
“Come out’here, missy,” the bearded man called out, “We-know y’all’re in there…”
The desk clerk flashed out a hand and directed the others towards the front of the motel. As they receded around the building, Lucille dashed back to her room and secured it with the deadbolt. She left the room exactly as it had been, with the lights still on and the TV mumbling, and took watch at the window, peering through a diminutive crack in the drapes.
A sudden flash of movement and a brown form stumbled from out of the underbrush where the previous night’s scuffle had ensued, followed by Tom Jones sliding out from behind. It moved in an odd jerky manner that was profoundly not quite right. It reeked of rotting, decaying flesh; the smell permeated even the walls between the parking lot and the motel interior, weaving its way into Lucille’s room in a sickly sour stench. The putrefied beast lurched onto the parking lot, a grotesque mess of brown matted fur with white bones gleaming forth from bloody, pearly pus-oozing flesh. Perhaps it was once a deer, or maybe a small horse, but now it was no longer easily recognizable as either. Tom Jones slunk alongside as if herding the hapless creature to some specific destination.
Dizzy with adrenaline and confusion, Lucille turned away for a moment to collect herself. As she turned back she noticed that the entourage of pallid, grey, shadowy figures had rounded the building and descended upon the scene, circling the animal. From amidst the mob of ghastly figures, the horrific beast emitted a shrill blood-curdling scream the moment before they bowled it over and began to feed. Again.
The scene played out in déjà vu as if she were watching the same nightmare she had had the night before: the widening bright black eyes, jaws unhinged, writhing mass of limbs and bodies wriggling in to tear at the flesh of the wretched form trapped in their midst. As they had their fill, the ghastly figures withdrew, blood dripping from their jagged teeth. They straightened up, and cracked their jaws back into place, their bright black eyes deadening to their usual hollow stare.
Unable to watch any longer, Lucille slid down the wall and wept, whimpering to herself as quietly as she could muster, breaths heaving between silenced sobs. “Oh my God,” she sighed. She remained frozen in place for what seemed like an eternity, too afraid to move to find out what time it was. Finally, she was able to rouse herself, and she crept along the edge of the room to shove the TV bureau in front of the door only to discover it was bolted to the floor. A quick assessment determined that all of the furniture was secured as if she was on lockdown, why hadn’t she noticed that before? She propped the only moveable object, a chair, against the deadbolted door and took refuge in the bathroom. Eventually, once the adrenaline receded, she fell asleep in the bathtub.
And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or here on her website.
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:
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:
