Through the strange trees flew birds of shocking colors, iridescent and violently noisy, birds with headdresses and wings like burning angels, flying apparitions from dreams. But in the month the travelers lingered in the colony awaiting passage, whenever they walked out they saw creatures that surpassed any nightmare, springing fur-covered beasts with rudder-like tails, lizards swelling out their throats in gruesome puffs, assorted spiders said to be fatally poisonous.
