O is for One-and-Only

         (My A to Z Challenge theme this year is How to Make a Fantastical Creature, in which I explore 26 traits that are widely shared among the monsters and marvels of fantasy and folklore.)

        Among ordinary earthly animals it generally takes two to tango, if you know what I mean - and a lot more than that to maintain a viable population.  In the world of legend, on the other hand, there are quite a few creatures that are unique: only one of them in the world.  Some, like the phoenix, regenerate asexually, so that although there’s only one at a time, the species can continue.  Some, like the minotaur and several of the mutant creatures we saw at M, come about by some hideous one-time-only aberration.  Still other creatures, however, just don’t seem to concern themselves with carrying on the family name.  They are unique and proud of it.

        Yamata no Orochi was a dragon with eight heads, eight tails, and the usual diet of maidens.  The hero Susanoo gave each head a vat of liquor, and when they had all fallen asleep drunk, he cut them all off.  Just to be complete, he cut off all the tails, as well, and in one of them discovered an epic magical sword.  Bonus!

        The Nargun is a beast made of stone, except for its arms and breast.  It lives in a cave behind a waterfall in Victoria, Australia, and has a tendency to drag unwary passers-by into its cave.  Weapons are useless against its stoniness, and invariably bounce back upon the attacker.

        In Ontario, Canada a thirty-foot-long lake monster called Oyaleroweck was causing trouble, and a priest was sent to solve the problem.  Instead of killing it, he sent it to the next lake over, and while I applaud his mercy, I can’t help but wonder whether the residents around Lake Saint Joseph were happy with their new neighbor.  It’s precisely because of people like this priest that it is illegal in my state to capture and relocate wildlife.

        Long ago the Ellén Trechend devastated Ireland from its base in County Roscommon, but we are not entirely sure what this monster even looked like.  It definitely had three heads, but was it perhaps a giant vulture?  Alas, it’s been slain, so we’ll never know.

         The Peteu was a monstrous bird strong and voracious enough to carry off entire horse-and-carts, and it tormented the town of Vergisson, France.  Its beak was surrounded by long, whip-like feathers, but its most remarkable feature was that after a brave hero had finally defeated it, he discovered that it weighed only four ounces without all its feathers.

        The carcolh lives in a cave beneath the town of Hastingues, France.  It is sort of like a monstrous, slimy snail with hairy tentacles.  It doesn’t matter that it’s big and slow and doesn’t move around much, because if anyone comes within range it can seize them with its tentacles and drag them into its lair to be consumed.

        In Persia the hero Kirsasp encountered a monster called the Azi Sruvara.  It was so enormous that at first he mistook it for a hill and stopped for a picnic on its back, although it was yellow, had horns as tall as a mountain, huge eyes, and ears as big as fourteen blankets!  It took Kirsasp all day to run all the way up to its head to knock it dead.

        I’ll mention the more recent sci fi and fantasy trope of the creature that is the last of its kind.  But I’m not counting those today, because what makes today’s creatures actually fantastical is somehow being a species of which there is never more than one.

        Admittedly with all the monsters killed by all the heroes sometimes it can be hard to decide what’s a separate and unique species, and what’s just another variant of dragon.  So perhaps someday I’ll do a post on those hapless beasts that I deemed insufficiently one-and-only for purposes of this post.  But you can revisit more truly unique beasties in previous posts about the six-legged, turtle-shelled Tarasque, the green-quilled Velue, the banished Oillepheist, the arm-twisting Grendel and his Mother, and the Questing Beast of ill omen.  Several more unique monsters have already been mentioned in this very alphabet, including the three-headed Chimaera at C, many of the demons at D, the hideous Bugul Noz at E, Zlatorog at J… and a few more still to come - Foreshadowing!

        The moral of these one-off creatures is that while we’re all special and unique, some of us are definitely more special and unique than others.  A Pro Tip for scientists and explorers is to remove all identifiable geographical data when you publish your discovery of the next singular creature.  Otherwise a swarm of heroes armed with everything from holy water to magic swords will be there within days, all intent on slaying your monster — and we don’t need any more animals to be made extinct right now.

        If you could bring any species back from extinction (either a single individual or a viable breeding population) what would you pick?

[Pictures: Phoenix, wood block print by Jost Amman from Thierbuch, 1592 (Image from Library of Congress);

Yamata no Orochi, illustration by Kobayashi Eitaku from Yamata No Orochi, 1886 (Image from Waseda University Library);

Azi Sruvara, illumination by Master of the Jainesque Shahnama, 1425-1450 (Image from Museum Reitberg);

Tarasque, illustration by André des Gachons from La Livre des Légendes by Clovis Hugues, 1895 (Image from L'aube naissante);

Questing Beast, illustration by Arthur Rackham from The Romance of King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table, 1917 (Image from University of Rochester).]