Inside, Gibear started to snarl like a mad animal. I ran back into our little dugout and found him trying to pull something out of the wall: a thick root of some sort.
“Leave it alone: you do not even like vegetables,” I reminded him, prying him lose from the root. But then my stomach gave a little flip when I saw that Gibear was not chomping on a root at all; rather, his teeth clenched around a giant hoof jutting out from that dirt! We scraped and dug and scraped some more, and soon found three more hooves, each the size of a drum. It appeared that we had been attempting to dig a sod dugout in the middle of an animal graveyard.
It has taken weeks to excavate our mysterious dugout creature. The leathery old carcass emerged headfirst: an absolutely mammoth buffalo! Or, an ancient buffalo ancestor, rather. If modern buffalo hides make a nice coat, this animal’s hide could have been reworked into a circus tent.
But then, to our shock, when we finally lugged it out of the wall, another head sat on what should have been its rump. This, indeed, was a strange turn of events. After carefully examining the animal’s remains, I saw that it had led a trying life. The first head had the teeth of an herbivore—an animal that eats only plants and leaves. Yet the second head belonged to a carnivore! The biggest of those sharp teeth was as long as my arm.
The whole arrangement reminded me of a marriage in which a lady always wants to eat one thing, while the husband wants another. It immediately brought to mind that wonderful old nursery rhyme:
Jack Sprat could eat no fat.
His wife could eat no lean.
And so between them both, you see,
They licked the platter clean.
Well, I am afraid that the Two-Headed Mammoth Buffalo enjoyed no such harmony, and their reign over the Great Plains of Nebraska was destined to be fairly short. I found many other similar carcasses in the weeks that followed, and the herbivore end was always quite mangled up. Here are the facts: the herbivore side of the Mammoth Buffalo could always eat, for the grass was always long and delicious. But for the carnivore side, it was a different story. When winter had been particularly harsh, or there was generally a shortage of juicy rabbits and other game, the carnivore head got quite hungry. It simply could not help looking down its large body and seeing that sweet, unsuspecting herbivore on the other end.
And when it could not stand the hunger another second, the carnivore side of the body attacked the herbivore side of the body.
So you can see why that species was not long for this world.
I made my notes and sketches of the beasts, which reminded me of certain people in my life who always managed to be their own worst enemies.
“Like that old Mr. Parsons, who was so in love with plump Miss Eddlestump,” echoed Mother Wiggins’s voice in my mind.
“Yes, Mother—exactly,” I replied, remembering Mr. Parsons, an old man who lived in our Shropshire village, who had wanted nothing more than to marry Miss Eddlestump, a fetching local Shropshire maid. But he was so convinced that he would be rejected by the object of his affection that he always said nasty, abrupt things to her, instead of reading her love poems and confessing his affection.
Predictably, she married someone else.
We are always biting off our own heads.
33. Also part of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, Nebraska became an official state in 1867.
34. Some estimates state that as many as 280,000 American buffalo were killed each year in the 1830s.
35. The first transcontinental railroad was not built until the 1860s; until then, adventurers crossed the country on horses, in wagon trains, or by stagecoach.
March 1858
Louisiana’s Bayou Country36
In Which I Discover … the Dreaded Gossip Peacocks
(Terroris Rumusculus Pavonis)
Most visitors come to New Orleans to sample the buttery local cuisine or take in the sights. This, of course, is not my purpose (although I do admit to ravaging a bundle of beignets37 upon my arrival several weeks ago—we were ravenous after our stagecoach journey across the country). And the sights here are rather astonishing: one would think that ancient Rome were back, with this area’s new temple-like houses, built by fleets of African slaves.38 Just how these Americans—supposedly devoted to freedom and such—keep slaves is beyond me. The human capacity for hypocrisy never ceases to amaze me; perhaps it is part of the chemistry of the species.
Despite the intrusion of white men in this part of the world, many fascinating native tribes still call this region home. Gibear (still rose-red!) and I took a boat up the Mississippi River from New Orleans and met with many fascinating tribesmen: the Bayougoula natives, the Natchez natives, the Houma natives, and more. The Houma natives were particularly accommodating. One of them brought me to a nearby plantation and pointed into one of its vast gardens: there, several pet peacocks strutted over the lawn, trailing their glorious feathered tails through scattered magnolia petals.
The plantation owners had obviously imported these birds from an exotic land, but the Houma told me that, long ago, a very different sort of peacock had lorded over the province. When I took out my notebook and asked for details, the native said nothing but turned and walked away, beckoning for us to follow. Gibear and I scurried along after him. We walked on a winding trail through the sugarcane fields, straight into the bayou beyond. A little boat bobbed gently at the edge of the swamp.
Steam rose from the bayou’s waters as we passed across it in the boat; I have not seen mosquitoes so large since we discovered the Gargantuan King Mosquitoes in Brazil! Alligators floated just below the swamp’s surface, waiting to snap up unsuspecting prey. Thunder rumbled in the distance, never getting closer, but never rolling away, either. Soon the boat bumped up against a small island in the center of the swamp. A bunch of dry palmetto leaves had been piled in the middle; the Houma native cleared them away. Underneath lay the F.O.I.s of some of the most interesting, sinister creatures I have seen in quite a long time: three birds, each the size and shape of a peacock, over 150 million years old.
Peacocks have always been admired for their magnificent tails, which spread out into iridescent fans covered in spots resembling eyes. For this reason, many cultures have associated peacocks with vision, wisdom, and all sorts of magical powers. Yet in reality, today’s common peacocks are usually nasty, pretty simpletons. Of course, they do not foresee the future or communicate with the gods; rather, they think only of their own comfort and pout if they are not admired enough.
(“Rather like someone else I know, Wendell,” echoed Mother Wiggins’s voice in my mind.
“Are you referring to yourself, Mother?” I retorted, and after that, the voice was silent.)
Back to the bayou fossils. Now, these ancient peacocks were an entirely different matter when it came to the question of harboring special powers. The tail on the first ancient peacock fossil indeed featured eyes: not just feathered spots resembling eyes, but real eyes—hundreds of them (eye sockets absolutely littered the fossilized carcass). Even more repulsive: real ears had once covered the tail of the second beast. And the tail of the third had been covered in mouths! What immediately came to mind? The old saying:
See no evil
Hear no evil
Speak no evil
Which essentially reminds people that they should not listen to or repeat mean-spirited gossip.
Well, in the case of the bayou peacocks, it appears that they could only do the reverse: see evil, hear evil, and speak evil. The Houma native told me the legend surrounding these three strange creatures. It might not be wholly true, but it is still worth recounting in its entirety—for the evidence in their fossils seems to back up that legend.
Many, many years ago, these three birds roamed the bayou area. Not in a pack, mind you—each roamed on its own. All of the other swamp creatures hated them, according to myth, for these peacocks were spies, picking up on all of their neighbors’ shameful secrets and filing them away in their minds. (The skulls of the birds
did appear to be rather pronounced, indicating big brains, capable of storing many memories.)
But then, once a year, on the eve of the full harvest moon, the three birds would meet on the island in the center of the bayou. When the moon reached the highest point in the sky, the peacocks fanned out their feathers and stood one behind the other, as though melding into a single terrible creature with hundreds of eyes, ears, and mouths. The mouths on the tail of the third peacock would begin to talk, very softly at first, and then louder and louder. It sounded like the horrid scream of a modern peacock, except multiplied a hundred times over (the lungs in the Mouth Peacock fossil rivaled those of the dreaded Whispering Vine in the Amazon!).
And what did these mouths say? They broadcast every dark and tawdry secret the three birds had learned in their year of travels, saving the juiciest, cruelest tidbits for last. The Dreaded Gossip Peacocks reveled in humiliating their neighbors. Oh, the pleasure it gave them! But, like all incurable gossips, they eventually ratted out the wrong creature.
In this case, that wrong creature was a rather large prehistoric bayou alligator who had been discovered dining on a shoot of bamboo by the “See No Evil” Peacock. When the harvest moon rose, the Gossip Peacocks convened and announced that the alligator was not the fearsome carnivore he purported to be, but rather a sissy herbivore subsisting on a salad-y little diet.
The alligator glowered on the edge of the bayou as the Gossip Peacocks screamed out his secret. And then, when the birds had finished their speech and looked quite pleased with themselves, the alligator waddled up to them, chomped off each of their heads, and spit them back onto the ground. (Indeed, the fossilized heads of the ancient birds had been savagely separated from their bodies.)
It was true then, and remains true now: sharp teeth always seem to win out over a sharp tongue.
36. Also part of the territory bought from France in 1803, Louisiana became an American state in 1812. The bayou country surrounds the Mississippi Delta; “bayou” is a regional word for “swamp.”
37. Beignets are doughnut-like confections made from fried dough.
38. During this time, southern Louisiana was home to some of the South’s biggest sugarcane plantations; some of the plantation owners built magnificent grand houses modeled after ancient Greek and Roman architecture, and had hundreds of slaves in their service. These slaves were often forced to harvest trees from deep inside the swamps to build the big houses; they often succumbed to the bayous’ alligators and venomous snakes.
July 1858
Near Bermuda
In Which I Discover … the Devil’s Triangle Magnet Tribe
(Magneticus Populus ab Bermuda)
We are on the move again. To avoid another long overland journey, Gibear and I decided to travel on a schooner up the Atlantic Ocean, along the east coast of North America. Once again, I had hoped for smooth sailing, and once again, my wishes were thwarted. Several weeks ago, as we sailed alongside Florida, a storm blew up from the south. Lightning struck one of our masts, splitting it and setting it aflame; it collapsed into the second mast, which in turn dominoed into the third.
Needless to say, our boat was left mastless, and we began to drift in the vast Atlantic Ocean. The crew and captain grew hysterical. I tried to reassure them: someone would surely find us.
“You don’t understand,” said the captain. “If we drift any further east, we’ll be doomed.” He pointed to a map of the ocean, made the outline of a triangle on the paper, and told me that any ship that enters into this area mysteriously disappears. The area has been fetchingly nicknamed the Devil’s Triangle, and the captain recited a long list of English, French, Spanish, and American ships that had vanished there.
Well! This sounded terribly interesting. So, later that day, when we did indeed drift into the dreaded Devil’s Triangle,39 I was quite excited to investigate the possible natural reasons behind the disappearing-boat phenomenon. While the crew tried to fix the masts, I conducted a few minor experiments by the side of the boat. First, I took a small silver snuffbox40 out of my luggage and held it over the side of the schooner.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzip!
It struggled out of my hand—as if someone had forcefully yanked it from my grasp—and plunged right into the sea. Most interesting indeed. I decided to continue the experiment. When everyone was looking the other way, I picked up a larger metal box from the deck and held it out over the waves.
Kerrrrrrr-chunk!
It crashed right into the waves, as though pulled down by invisible ropes. The only sensible conclusion: this was the work of a massive magnetic field beneath the sea.41
Fortunately, at that moment we just happened to be bobbing above a shallow patch of the sea; I affixed a strong wooden hook to a rope, threw it over the side, and began to dredge the ocean bottom to see if I could unearth any clues. The crew circled around me as I pulled all sorts of objects up from the deep. The first item unsettled everyone: a leather boot, which presumably belonged to a seaman lost in an earlier Devil’s Triangle shipwreck. My hook then unearthed the steering wheel of a drowned ship, making everyone even more nervous. The third discovery, however, cheered the crew considerably: a small box of gold Spanish coins, lost on an expedition hundreds of years earlier. I, on the other hand, grew quite frustrated. All of these items were effects of the undersea phenomenon; I wanted to find the cause of it.
Just then, my wooden hook caught on something heavy; I pulled and yanked and tugged, and the object unmoored itself from the seabed and bobbed to the surface. Gibear let out a triumphant Giii-bear bark, but the crewmen recoiled in disgust; one of them even threw up over the side of the boat.
Only I was overjoyed, for on closer inspection of this object, I found that it was a barnacle-covered but well-preserved carcass of an ancient underwater man. This creature was terribly squat—no higher than two feet tall—yet evidence in the area shows that the Devil’s Triangle Magnet Tribe, as I have named them, had not always been so compact. When we anchored the boat and I was able to dredge the area, I uncovered several earlier Magnet Tribesman carcasses three times as tall as the first one. Some twenty-five million years old, they resembled a cross between today’s humans and a fish with extremely thick scales; each one had arms and legs and walked upright on the ocean floor, but sported bulbous fish-like eyes on either side of its head and breathed through gills in its neck.
It appears that the Magnet Tribe had developed a rather unusual way of feeding themselves down there. While they might have looked very impressive with all of those scales and gills, they were remarkably inefficient sea creatures: they lacked fins, meaning that they could not swim with any speed or catch any fish to eat. So this Magnet Tribe came up with a far-fetched little scheme: they appear to have laid down a small but powerful magnetic field in the ocean floor, in the way that we would plant a garden today. The purpose: to attract the iron in the blood of fish and drag them down to the bottom.
The earliest effort failed. The magnetic field brought in only tiny fish, like minnows—certainly not enough to sustain the Tribe. So they planted more magnets.
This time, a larger batch of fish wumped down to the bottom of the sea; the Tribe had quite a feast. In fact, the magnetic field proved such a success that the Tribe saw no reason to stop there. They planted more magnets, and then another batch, and then another—and with each planting, their catches grew ever bigger and juicier.
As all of this was going on, something odd was happening to the Devil’s Triangle Magnet Tribe. Each morning, they woke up slightly shorter than the day before. Their corpses show that soon the tallest of them stood only four feet; not long after, the tallest cut a pitiful figure at a mere three feet. In just a few generations, the Magnet Tribesmen had gone from being tall and lean to being short and dense. The reason: the great magnet garden was pulling on the iron in their own blood, and slowly compacting their bodies, like accordions being squeezed shut.
Yet they chose to ignore what was happening—who cared if t
hey had grown ugly and squat? They were dining delectably, and that was all that mattered.
So they continued to plant magnets—until they went one batch too far. The field grew so strong that it rooted the Tribe to the ground: they could not even lift their arms or legs anymore. Meanwhile, fish careened to the ground all around them, but, unable to reach out and grab them, the Tribe eventually starved and died out, rooted in their peculiar sea garden.
Over the years, the magnetic field has weakened. However, even though it is no longer powerful enough to attract iron in a creature’s blood, it remains a threat to contemporary ships, which contain heaps of metal—especially ships carrying guns, which so many of them do these days. Fortunately, our own schooner had been crafted almost entirely of wood, and we threw every piece of metal on board over the side—including the anchor, the cook’s pots, and the captain’s copper-rimmed glasses.
And thus we drifted undisturbed across the Devil’s Triangle—and miraculously evaded the Magnet Tribe’s cursed garden.
39. More commonly known as the Bermuda Triangle, the Devil’s Triangle remains a mystery to this day; throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many ships and aircraft disappeared within its boundaries. The apexes of the triangle are generally believed to be Bermuda; Miami, Florida; and San Juan, Puerto Rico.
40. Men of this era used to sniff powdered tobacco called snuff; they carried it around with them in fancy little boxes.
41. Even today, the Devil’s Triangle is one of the two places on earth where a magnetic compass does not point toward true north, thanks to that undersea magnetic field. The other area is located off the east coast of Japan and is called the Devil’s Sea by Japanese sailors. It, too, is known for mysterious disappearances.
May 1859
The Wondrous Journals of Dr. Wendell Wellington Wiggins Page 6
