Week 1: Specialists and Naifs

Specialist's Account:

The elusive Quisquil (Spectroputris vorax) cannot be perceived with mere eyes; it can only be observed through lenses made of strange glasses such as shattered bottle-bottoms and cracked jar-lids. Layer enough of these together, and through the cracks, colored glazes and sediment, you might just catch a glimpse of something that should not be there, a heaving mass of things forgotten and forsaken, crawling with a lumbering gait through alleyways and corridors alike, never perceived by passersby.

It is crucial that you keep up the pretense of its invisibility, lest you meet your death in its plastic stomach. The main difficulty in this endeavor would be its smell, which will come to you as a thick, rapidly advancing wave of the stink of rotting foodstuffs and rusted metal. Many a creature-spotter, unable to keep ignoring the Quisquil in the face of such an olfactory assault, has met an unfortunate end at the sharp edges of the Quisquil’s long scissor-claws. Despite the obvious danger, Quisquils are rarely aggressive towards living beings at large, provided that it is not detected and their safety is threatened. It makes its abode in trash piles and feeds on the same, with truly omnivorous tastes but a preference for the sharp metals and rotting matter mentioned above, which are crucial to the maintenance of its body and must be regularly absorbed. It should be noted that this beast despises those who do not litter in the correct spaces, perhaps feeling that they have deprived it of easy food.

Traveller's Log:

I first glimpsed the Quisquil through the warped lens of a broken bottle—just a flicker of movement where there should have been nothing. At first, I thought it was a trick of the light, but then the pile of trash shifted on its own.

Not like something burrowing beneath it, no—the garbage itself was alive.

Its body was a heaving mound of things that shouldn’t belong together: rotting food, twisted metal, shreds of plastic bags clinging like skin. Parts of it oozed a thick, dark sludge, while other sections jutted out in sharp, rusted angles.

Every few seconds, something inside it clicked—a sound like scissors snapping shut—and I realized with a chill that those were its claws, half-buried in the mess, twitching as if testing the air.

The smell hit me next. It wasn’t just the usual stink of a back-alley dumpster; this was worse, deeper, like something had festered for years in a place where no air could reach it.

My eyes watered, but I didn’t dare blink. Because the moment I did, the thing lurched forward—not walking, not slithering, but sort of… pouring itself along the ground, scraps and debris folding into its mass as it moved.

I held my breath.

If it knew I could see it, what would it do? Would those scissor-claws snip through me like I was just another piece of trash? Or worse—would it drag me into itself, adding my bones to the things already rotting inside it?

Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the Quisquil stilled. It slumped, collapsing into an ordinary-looking pile of garbage. But I knew better now. It was still there. Watching. Waiting.

And worst of all—hungry.

Specialist's Account:

The townsparrow (Ptilonotus tricoloris) is an amphibious bird that dwells in rainforest habitats and was first sighted by explorer Francois Duret in 1989 in the Amazon Rainforest. Its name comes from the highly saturated colours of its plumage; the head of the bird is red, the chest is white like a cravat, and the rest of the bird is navy-blue – thus, it is often compared to a three-piece suit mannequin. This resemblance is further enhanced by the bird’s upright posture and the crisp delineation between the colours of its feathers. Measuring approximately 22 centimetres in length, the townsparrow is not especially large, but it is quite visible and unique even among the diversity of the rainforest.

One of the more unusual characteristics of the townsparrow is its amphibious nature. Unlike most avian species, it is equally comfortable in water as it is in air. It forages primarily along riverbanks and shallow pools, diving with remarkable agility to catch small amphibians and crustaceans, often staying in the water for up to five minutes. Gills under the neck feathers provide the townsparrow with the ability to breath underwater. The feathers on its lower body are slightly oil-slicked and denser than usual, a probable adaptation for insulation and buoyancy. In fact, Duret's journal described the bird as "half sparrow, half otter," though this was thought to be a form of rhetoric until the bird was further studied.

Traveller's Log

Indeed, this was the journey of my life. I was canoeing down the riverbank of a small and narrow river in the Amazon Rainforest when a bright, colorful streak shot into the water like a bullet. It made a sharp splash while the scent of musty river water entered the air. I peered over my moldy brown raft. I saw a short blur effortlessly swimming in the water. Suddenly, the thing shot forward, further diving towards the edge of the riverbank, moving silently but with an unnatural level of speed. As I observed the thing for what seemed like several minutes, it shot out of the water, where it perched on a branch of a tree. With it finally standing still, I could tell that the thing darting in the water was actually a bird. The bird was no longer than the length of my arm, and it carried a crab the size of my palm in its beak. The bird was rather colorful, with vivid coloring along the entire length of the body. The head and neck of the bird were a bright tomato red. The body of the bird was white like a blank canvas. The rest of the bird was a dark jersey blue. The bird stood like a king with its straight pose and vivid details. The bird, noticing me, clacked up the small orange crab once again and quickly flew off into the depths of the Amazon.