Return of the Skrewt Spawn!

[Amanda]

In the spirit of the creepy stories (in the sense of those things 
that creepeth upon the earth--or, worse, *me*), I am reposting the 
Attack of the Skrewt Spawn. Enjoy. 

Message 11638
From:   "Amanda Geist" <editor at t...> 
Date:  Sat Aug 10, 2002  12:43 pm
Subject:  Attack of the Skrewt Spawn
 
Allow me to quote the description of Blast-Ended Skrewts:

" They looked like deformed, shell-less lobsters, horribly pale and 
slimy-looking, with legs sticking out in very odd places and no 
visible heads."

It is my sad and sober duty to inform you all, and to warn those of 
you who live in dry, desert areas, that Hagrid is evidently *not* the 
first wizard to breed such things. A close relative of the Skrewts 
evidently escaped and has established itself in the native fauna. I 
know this because I killed one in my garage a couple of days ago.

This creature, cleverly sensing the absence of my husband, He Who 
Must Deal With Bugs, invaded the *day* he left. And it chose its time 
well. Picture this.....a sleepy woman remembers she has not fed the 
cat (aided in this by the cat making a constant stream of trills and 
hopeful little forays toward the garage, wherein are his food and 
water bowls). Sleepy woman, I point out, is wearing no shoes, which 
is very stupid given the fact that (a) the cat's attitude toward his 
box has been very cavalier for quite a while, (b) the garage is where 
I see most of the recluses (although the odds that they can bite 
before being crushed against concrete are small, unlike when you sit 
on them on upholstery or stand on them on carpet); (c) the garage is
also a very likely place for scorpions (in fact, the carcass of a 
rather large dead one is, even as we speak, under the bag of cat 
food, startling me on a regular basis, but I never have anything to 
hand to deal with it and simpy make yet another quickly-forgotten 
mental note to clear it away in a bit). So no shoes is not the 
brightest way to go into the garage, but the foregoing should also 
let you all know that I am not entirely unprepared or unfamiliar with 
creepies in the garage. Okay.

I turn on the light, open the door, and stand on the step in the 
garage. Leon (the cat) comes through the cat door in the wall and 
begins his loop-through-the-legs-and-cat-food-bag routine. A movement 
on the garage floor (a couple inches below the raised area where the 
freezer sits) catches my eye, and I think it is a scorpion, a large 
one. I look. It's not. I don't know what it is.

Let me say now that I am a native Texan and have lived 37 1/2 of my 
38 years here. With the exception of about four years in Austin, all 
of that time was in San Antonio. The most recent seven years were in 
this very house. And I have never, never, never, *ever* seen anything 
like this thing crawling (very fast)towards me. I am horrified.

It moves like a scorpion, in very fast little jerky rushes. 
Scorpions, in fact, are loved by most cats because they move like cat 
toys and are fun to play with (cats are way too fast to get stung). 
Not my cat, though, of course, so no help in this situation either. 
Leon looked at this creature and promptly ignored it, just as I have 
seen him watch a scorpion walk past him, and he continues his "feed 
me" routine, getting massively in the way as I try simultaneously to 
keep this thing in sight, stay away from it, make sure I'm not 
stepping on any known evils while dealing with the unknown, and
find something to kill it with. Even if Jan were here, it's moving 
too fast for me to go for help, and I am NOT going to allow anything 
that looks like this to get away alive.

I am finding it a bit hard to look away from this thing, making it 
even more difficult. This is true horrified fascination. It has two 
very long front legs (I find out later they aren't legs, but such was 
my impression at the time) held up and out, in the exact attitude you 
take when you are playing scary monster with your kids and are 
chasing them--extended over its head (except it doesn't look like it 
has a head) and forward. The pattern on its back is very reminiscent 
of the scale pattern on a scorpion, and the color is similar--that, 
combined with its movement, makes my mind *still* try to make it a 
scorpion even when I can see it's not.

It comes up the little raised shelf and I do a creditable imitation 
of those ladies in cartoons on chairs, jumping back onto the step 
below the door. [To my credit, I don't think I yelled.] It goes back 
down, I jump down and grab one of a pair of sandals that's in the 
garage because Leon hairballed in them and I haven't had time to 
clean them out yet. I check for recluses beneath and on the sandal--
none. Good. I killed one under a garbage bag out here last trash day. 
I look for The Thing.

It has gone along the edge of the raised area, heading toward some of 
the Stuff piled in here, and is perilously close to escaping. This 
thing is not only as fast as a scorpion, it doesn't stop like they 
do, it's in continuous motion, little rushes. I quickly scan the 
vicinity for other nasties, see none, vault the catbox, miss the cat 
poop, and smite this thing. It doesn't stop moving, but it stops 
going anywhere, which I interpret with some satisfaction as death 
throes. Eventually it does stop moving.

It's not moving and I am no longer threatened. I am still staring in
horrified fascination. I don't know what this thing is. A closer look 
is unpleasant, because the oddities I noticed are reinforced. I wish 
they'd been tricks of the light or the adrenaline, but what I saw was 
accurate. It has a body like a spider, and those front things can't 
be legs because it has eight other ones. It's about the size--for 
those of you in the US--of a large one of those big garden spiders 
that roam the grass, a diameter (including legs) of about 2 to 2-1/2 
inches. Its head is awful. It looks like a peach--just a groove, no 
eyes that I can see, no features. The head is shiny. The butt 
(whatever that is in bugspeak) is indeed the color and pattern of a 
scorpion, but no stinger. I am afraid to touch it and leave it where 
it lies. I wonder if an alien ship has landed nearby and what other 
odd things may be happening by. This looks like it belongs in a cave. 

It's still there, by the way--I keep sneaking glances at it when I'm 
feeding my useless cat, to make sure it hasn't reanimated and snuck 
off to plot revenge. I was *totally* creeped out by this.

Last night, with Catherine's help, I did a Google search and *found* 
the thing. It's called a sun spider. Or camel spider. Or whipscorpion 
or windscorpion (due to its speed). I found the site of some lunatic 
who takes pictures of arachnids as a hobby (rest easy, any of you who 
thought *we* were weird), and I made a positive identification. [This 
guy even has *movies* of this thing, if anyone is masochistic enough 
to want to see how it moves.] But it's not natural, I refuse to 
believe it.

No, this is another wizarding thing that escaped, some experiment of a
teacher or student at the Texas wizarding academy. Like horny toads,
creatures like this are positive evidence that there is a wizarding
population in this area. To my disgust, the magic control office has 
as much problem with people taking vacation in the summer as other 
offices, and nobody has shown up to Obliviate my encounter with this 
(which I would appreciate).

Anyway, I now give you the URL so you can see the Skrewt spawn. It's 
clearly related to Hagrid's larger blasting Skrewts. From the 
descriptions I found, this subspecies does not shoot fire. Thank all 
the good gods. I must warn you, not only is this thing hideous, the 
lunatic taking the picture has it sitting on his *foot* and his 
*hand.* This makes my skin crawl on two levels, the thing itself and 
the thought of it touching me. I still won't even poke the body with 
a stick; He Who Deals With Bugs must handle it when he gets back. 
This is beyond me trapping stuff under bowls and cups and balancing 
large unabridged dictionaries on top to keep them there until he can 
arrive and handle it; this thing had to die and I'm even ooked out by
the carcass. Looking at the pictures, I can see the tiny black eyes 
buried in the crevice, but they are much less harder to see on the 
one I met. And mine was larger.

In a word. Eeurgh.

--Amanda the Skrewt-Killer

P.S. of October 2003--the Skrewt was, some months later, mounted in 
lucite, has been carried on trips and shown to other HP fanfolk, and 
is currently on the shelf above my desk at work as I type.  ~A


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