Hey, it's the weekend. Time for a bit of fun...Squonk!
Few people outside of Pennsylvania have ever heard of the quaint beast, which is said to be fairly common in the hemlock forests of that State. (Honestly, I was born and raised in Pennsylvania and I had never heard of this creature.) The range of the squonk is very limited. It has a very retiring disposition, generally traveling about at twilight and dusk. Because of its misfitting skin, which is covered with warts and moles, it is always unhappy; in fact it is said, by people who are best able to judge, to be the most morbid of beast. Hunters who are good at tracking are able to follow a squonk by its tear-stained trail, for the animal weeps constantly. When cornered and escape seems impossible, or when surprised and frightened, it may even dissolve itself in tears. Squonk hunters are most successful on frosty moonlight nights, when tears are shed slowly and the animal dislikes moving about; it may then be heard weeping under the boughs of dark hemlock trees. - "Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods" - William T. Cox - 1910
Mr. J. P. Wentling, formerly of Pennsylvania, but now at St. Anthony Park, Minnesota, had a disappointing experience with a squonk near Mont Alto. Wentling who one fine day at the turn of the century hid near its home after observing it and laying a trap for it, he snatched it up into his bag. As he was returning to the local village to show his friends what he had found in the woods, he noticed the leather bag he was carrying dripping from several cracks in the bottom making it noticeably lighter and of a strange shape. As he set it down on the ground, the legend suggests he suspected some trickery, but as he untied the top a strange liquid very much like water (or tears) spilled onto the soil at his feet. Cursing his bad luck, Wentling returned back to the village with nothing but the tale of his adventure and a soaked bag. - Unexplainable.net
The "scientific name" of the squonk, Lacrimacorpus dissolvens, comes from Latin words meaning "tear", "body", and "dissolve".
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| The Squonk is probably the world's ugliest animal. So ugly, in fact, that it spends most of its life crying over its cruel fate. Eventually many squonks just dissolve into a puddle of tears. You can read more about this sorry fellow and others like him in Richard Svennson's book "Fearsome Critters." |
The Squonk (according to the BBC)
The Squonk (Lacrimacorpus dissolvens) is a legendary creature from the Hemlock forests of north-central and north-western Pennsylvania. The earliest stories about the squonk are lost to history, but the legend probably dates back at least to the late 19th Century, when Pennsylvania's importance in the lumber industry was at its peak, relying heavily on hemlock trees.
Legends
Squonks are very shy, very ugly animals. Their skin is ill-fitting, and covered with warts and moles. Because they know they are so ugly, they weep almost constantly, and try to avoid being seen.
The one well-known story about squonks has to do with how they are hunted. Apparently, squonk skin is valued by some, but they are very difficult to catch, because of their extremely retiring nature. They can be most easily tracked on nights with a full moon, when their tears form glistening trails on the ground.
Sometime around the year 1900, a man named JP Wentling2 was able to successfully catch a squonk. Mr Wentling followed a trail of tears, and when he heard a nearby squonk weeping under a hemlock tree, he lured it by imitating the creature, presumably by weeping. He caught the squonk in a bag, and carried it home, while it sobbed pitifully in his sack. As he carried his prize home, he suddenly noticed that the bag was lighter, and on opening it, found that there was nothing inside but tears and bubbles.
Squonks will apparently dissolve completely into tears anytime they are cornered or threatened; this is the source of their scientific name, Lacrimacorpus dissolvens, from the Latin words for 'tear', 'body', and 'dissolve'.
Squonks in Literature and Music
William T Cox published a book in 1910, called Fearsome Creatures of the Lumber woods, With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts. In this book, he described the squonk, telling the story related above. The book was an encyclopaedic collection of legendary animals from United States folklore. Sadly, Fearsome Creatures is out of print, and rather difficult to find.
Jorge Luis Borges, the Nobel Prize-winning Argentinean writer, used Mr Cox's book as a source when compiling his Book of Imaginary Beings in 19693. This book has descriptions of 120 fantastic and legendary creatures from many different cultures, mostly European and New World.
Borges opened the preface of his 1969 edition with a sentence that may resonate with some h2g2 Researchers: 'As we all know, there is a kind of lazy pleasure in useless and out-of-the-way erudition.' His book has been illustrated and hypertextualized by students in Greece, and may be found here.
In 1974, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker of Steely Dan released their third LP, Pretzel Logic. This album featured the song 'Any Major Dude Will Tell You', a bittersweet acoustic ballad, offering consolation to someone whose world seems to be falling apart. Fagen puzzled his studio musicians with the line:
Have you ever seen a squonk's tears? Well, look at mine.
People on the street have all seen better times.
Exactly why Messrs Fagen and Becker chose this image to use in this song is as mysterious as most Steely Dan lyrics, and as they typically refuse to answer questions about their songs, fans continue to speculate. It seems likely that 'The Dan' learned about squonks from Borges' book.
Genesis
In 1976, the band Genesis released their first LP after Peter Gabriel left the group - the first to feature Phil Collins as frontman. This album, A Trick of the Tail contains the song 'Squonk'. This song is basically a retelling of the story of Mr Wentling, squonk hunter. That Collins is using the story as some kind of allegory seems clear, especially from the final verse:
All in all you are a very dying race
Placing trust upon a cruel world.
You never had the things you thought you should have had
And you'll not get them now,
And all the while in perfect time
Your tears are falling on the ground.
What Mr Collins is actually getting at is left to the reader to speculate. It is not known whether Genesis were inspired to find the story of the squonk by hearing 'Any Major Dude', or whether they discovered it independently, but the story in the song is clearly taken from Mr Cox's work, probably via Borges' book.
Squonks Today
At the time of writing of this entry (October, 2002), people continue to read Borges, and to listen to music from the 1970s. Squonks are being discovered by more and more people. The name turns up, here and there, as a username or domain name on the Internet somewhere, in the name of Squonk Opera, a performing arts troupe in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, and in other unexpected and unrelated contexts. Perhaps we are standing at the threshold of a veritable squonk renaissance!
One shadow looms over this prospect, however. The squonk's habitat, in the hemlock forests of Pennsylvania, is severely reduced. Most of the hemlock trees were logged by 1915, and the species has become just an occasional sight in the area's hardwood forests. It is not known whether squonks rely on hemlock trees, but as their range decreases, it can only mean hard times for any surviving squonk populations. The only hope for the squonk's survival may now lie in the imaginations of dreamers, poets, and those who treasure the legends of the past. - www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2
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