The Fusilated Sphinctnozzle
The Fusilated Sphinctnozzle originated in southern China, where it is known as the Dukay Dragon, but by 900 BC, Phoenician and Greek merchants had inadvertently spread the creature throughout the Mediterranean basin, the larval form travelling inside citrus fruit and pomegranates.
The Sphinctnozzle’s segmented back is topped with four nozzled sphincters that the creature uses to shoot fecal pellets at predators. The individual sphincters can be swiveled and aimed, and the creature will let fly with all four barrels at once if startled.
According to legend, Julius Caesar was temporarily blinded in his left eye by a Sphinctnozzle, which he supposedly disturbed when attempting to peer through some venetian blinds in his motel room during his campaigns in Gaul. Thanks to this story, the Sphinctnozzle featured heavily in medieval heraldry. In later times, several regiments of British fusiliers incorporated the creature into their emblems, most notably the Shatfordshire Sharps and Lord Rutherhump’s Riders.
In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Ecological Biologist E.O. Wilson said that Sphinctnozzles “are cool because they can shoot poop in your eye, and Stephen Jay Gould is just wrong because these really are a lot better than crawdads.”
On his deathbed, Evolutionary Biologist Stephen Jay Gould refused to reconcile with Wilson and is quoted as having said “Crawdads are awesome.” with his dying breath.
Fun Fact:
Harvard University has repeatedly and firmly denied rumors that these two world-famous scholars staged battles between crawdads and Sphinctnozzles in plastic kiddy pools at the Friday night keg parties of various fraternity houses. Nevertheless, many alumni from the 1980s claim to have lost large sums as students in the drunken betting that allegedly went on, with “Gould quoting the odds and Wilson taking the money and making notes.”
These alumni will also talk your ear off about how everybody got drenched with sweat and beer and how the girls looked naked in their wet t-shirts and all the weed they smoked and how awesome it was and get all nostalgic on you: “Fuck it was awesome. Even though my dad got pissed about the money, it was awesome.
“But you can’t hold that against them, the money I mean. Two old dudes just trying to get laid and make a little bread. They were the most fucked up guys there some nights. They wanted everybody to cut loose and have fun.
“Of course they were still hard asses with exams and papers and shit like that. And they wouldn’t listen to any complaining about how they’d suckered you. And they would sucker you. Don’t ever bet on the crawdads man, no matter how much Gould talks them up. I never learned my lesson. Fucker fooled me three times, and he gave me a C on my senior thesis too. You wanna hit the bong one more time before we go?”
Habitat:
The venetian blinds of old motels, citrus groves, the beards of Trustafundians and affluent hippie types.
More Improbable Creatures:
This trading card is part of a series titled “Uncle Joe’s Field Guide to Improbable Creatures” by Jethro Sleestak. View more Improbable Creatures.
