It came down the path some forty seconds later. Rather than shooting it immediately, I let it walk by while I studied it, looking for vulnerable areas. The thing bore no body armour as such, not even the type of body plating that our mutual friend Corbett describes on the Indian rhino, yet its skin seemed impervious to bullets. Its body, which I now could see in its entirety, was almost perfectly spherical except for the head and tentacles, and there were no discernable weak or thin spots where head and tentacles joined the trunk.
Still, I couldn’t let it continue along the path, because sooner or later it would come upon my men, who were totally unprepared for it. I looked for an earhole, could not find one, and with only the back of its head to shoot at felt that I could not do it any damage. So I stood up, waist deep in the water, and yelled at it. It turned toward me, and as it did so I put two more bullets into its left eye.
Its reaction was the same as before but much shorter in duration. Then it regained control of itself, stared balefully at me through both eyes — the good one and the one that had taken three bullets — and began walking toward me, weapon in hand…and therein I thought I saw a way in which I might finally disable it.
I began walking backward in the water, and evidently the creature felt some doubt about the weapon’s accuracy, because it entered the water and came after me. I stood motionless, my sights trained on the sword of heat. When the creature was perhaps thirty yards from me, it came to a halt and raised its weapon — and as it did so, I fired.
The sword of heat flew from the creature’s hand, spraying its deadly light in all directions. Then it fell into the water, its muzzle — if that is the right word, and I very much suspect that it isn’t — pointing at the creature. The water around it began boiling and hissing as steam rose, and the creature screeched once and sank beneath the surface of the river.
It took about five minutes before I felt safe in approaching it — after all, I had no idea how long it could hold its breath — but sure enough, as I had hoped, the beast was dead.
I have never before seen anything like it, and I will be stuffing and mounting this specimen for either the American Museum or the Smithsonian. I’ll send you a copy of my notes, and hopefully a number of photographs taken at various stages of the post mortem examination and the mounting.
I realize that I was incredibly lucky to have survived. I don’t know how many more such creatures exist here in the jungles of Cuba, but they are too malevolent to be allowed to survive and wreak their havoc on the innocent locals here. They must be eradicated, and I know of no hunter with whom I would rather share this expedition than yourself. I will put my gun and my men at your disposal, and hopefully we can rid the island of this most unlikely and lethal aberration.
Yours,
Roosevelt
Letter to Carl Akeley, hunter and taxidermist, c/o The American Museum of Natural History, July 13, 1898: Dear Carclass="underline"
Sorry to have missed you at the last annual banquet, but as you know, I’ve been preoccupied with matters here in Cuba.
Allow me to ask you a purely hypothetical question: could a life form exist that has no stomach or digestive tract? Let me further hypothesize that this life form ingests the blood of its prey — other living creatures — directly into its veins.
First, is it possible?
Second, could such a form of nourishment supply sufficient energy to power a body the size of, say, a grizzly bear?
I realize that you are a busy man, but while I cannot go into detail, I beg you to give these questions your most urgent attention.
Yours very truly,
Theodore Roosevelt
Letter to Dr. Charles Doolittle Walcott, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, July 13, 1898:
Dear Charles:
I have a strange but, please believe me, very serious question for you. Can a complex animal life form exist without gender? Could it possibly reproduce — don’t laugh — by budding? Could a complex life form reproduce by splitting apart, as some of our single-celled animals do?
Please give me your answers soonest.
Yours very truly,
Theodore Roosevelt
Excerpts from monograph submitted by Theodore Roosevelt on July 14, 1898 for publication by the American Museum of Natural History:
…The epidermis is especially unique, not only in its thickness and pliability, but also in that there is no layer of subcutaneous fat, nor can I discern any likely source for the secretion of the oily liquid that covers the entire body surface of the creature.
One of the more unusual features is the total absence of a stomach, intestine, or any other internal organ that could be used for digestion. My own conclusion, which I hasten to add is not based on observation, is that nourishment is ingested directly into the bloodstream from the blood of other animals.
The V-shaped mouth was most puzzling, for what use can a mouth be to a life form that has no need of eating? But as I continued examining the creature, I concluded that I was guilty of a false assumption, based on the placement of the “mouth”. The V- shaped opening is not a mouth at all, but rather a breathing orifice, which I shall not call a nose simply because it is also the source of the creature’s vocalizations, if I may so term the growls and shrieks that emanate from it…
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the eye is not the multi-faceted pupil, nor even the purple-and-brown cornea, which doubtless distorts its ability to see colors as we do, but rather the bird-like nictitating membrane, (or haw, as this inner eyelid is called in dogs) which protects it from harm. Notice that although it could not possibly have known the purpose or effects of my rifle, it nonetheless managed to lower it quickly enough to shield the eye from the main force of my bullet. Indeed, as is apparent from even a cursory examination of the haw, the healing process is so incredibly rapid that although I shot it three times in the left eye, the three wounds are barely discernable, even though the bullets passed entirely through the haw and buried themselves at the back of the eye.
I cannot believe that the creature’s color can possibly be considered protective coloration…but then, I do not accept the concept of protective coloration to begin with. Consider the zebra: were it brown or black, it would be no easier to spot at, say, a quarter mile, than a wildebeest or topi or prong-horned deer — but because God saw fit to give it black and white stripes, it stands out at more than half a mile, giving notice of its presence to all predators, thereby negating the notion of protective coloration, for the zebra’s stripes are, if anything, anti-protective, and yet it is one of the most successful animals in Africa. Thus, while the creature I shot is indeed difficult to pick out in what I assume to be its natural forest surroundings, I feel that it is brown by chance rather than design.
…Field conditions are rather primitive here, but I counted more than one hundred separate muscles in the largest of the tentacles and must assume there are at least another two hundred that I was unable to discern. This is the only section of the body that seems criss-crossed with nerves, and it is conceivable that if the creature can be slowed by shock, a bullet placed in the cluster of nerves and blood vessels where the tentacle joins the trunk of the body will do the trick…