a muse takes over – creating alien animal species

In this post, I’ll show you some of the animals I have invented for my science fiction tale of life on the alien planet Meniscus. If you think I have gone crazy, keep reading anyway!

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Hiking through the woods on planet Meniscus is dangerous. At any moment my characters can be attacked by carnivorous club-mosses, voracious bird-like reptiles seeking hair for their nests, packs of wolf-like ‘kotildi’, or three-eyed ‘slear-snakes’. Writing the scenes with these creatures has been so much fun.

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… the wolf-like kotildi are denizens of the Meniscus woodlands – wild, they are voracious, but tame, they are endearing!

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… Odymn and the Slain spend a bit of their time fending off trolling ‘slear-snakes’ …

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Probably because I love birds, I have included lots of birds in my list of species on Meniscus.  These include large flightless and burrowing ‘grell’, the wheeling ‘wind-fleers’, and woodland song-birds.

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… Odymn sees a bird that looks like a ‘scarlet minivet’ on one of her adventures … not afraid of her at all …

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Here is a list of some of the animals on planet Meniscus.

animal
description


elginard
wingless insect; moves by floating on air currents


evernell
feral cat-like scavenger, with whiskers; slinks, sprays saliva


grell-swallows
large burrowing birds; used for a food and fat source


kemet
striped horse-like animal with hooves and a long tail


kotildi
woodland carnivore, like a large wolf with a hump and mane; source of meat


midlar
territorial, tree-living rodent; hoots


nelip
small external parasite, infesting fur and hair


slear-snake
snake-like reptile with poison teeth, claws, and pincers


warbel
song bird living in the woodland


windfleer
heron-like bird; moves in flocks

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My favorite species on Meniscus is a small insect, the ‘elginard’. Wingless and fluffy, it follows currents of air, at the whim of the universe. Dandelion fluff and wooly aphids were my inspiration for the ‘elginard’.

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Copyright 2017  Jane Tims