Episode # 2.2: Crowned Berry-Garbler

Alex: Oh, hello there. I didn’t see you come in. My name is Apex Bellhop. Welcome to this installment of Unusual Specimens, the show where we get to take a look at some of Mother Nature’s red headed stepchildren. On this episode we’ll spend some time with Lavandria’s most imposing creature, the Crowned Berry-Garbler. I’ll let my co-host, Coxswain Paneater, tell you a bit about this amazing animal.

Colin: The Crowned Berry-Garbler is an unusual animal in that it begins its life fully grown, and its body grows smaller and more infant like as it gets older. Except for its left arm, which gains some of the mass from their rapidly shrinking body. As toddlers, Crowned Berry-Garblers are about seven feet tall, but a mature Berry-Garbler can be as diminutive as two feet.

Alex: That’s ridiculously informative, Colin.

Colin: Are you being sarcastic? I can’t even tell.

Alex: We start our adventure with a majestic view of the jungles of Lavandria, Garbler in sight. The majestic Crowned Berry Garbler gazes majestically with its majestic eyes upon its majestic territory. Has there ever been a visage as majestic as the Crowned Berry Garbler? Has there, Colin?

Colin: I don’t know, Alex. His face looks kind of like the deformed baby of a taco and a football to me. Anyway, here we have a large, newborn Crowned Berry-Garbler at about six foot eight. You can see the confusion in his eyes, his sense wonder regarding the world around him. Everything is new to this big little guy, his mind a true blank slate.

Colin: Notice if you will, dear viewers, the beautiful flora of the jungles of Lavandria. Lavandria is the only purple jungle in the world, a result of a botched marketing scheme on the part of the Hershey’s Chocolate company. You see, back in the nineteen hundred and eighties Hershey’s was considering adding another color to their popular “M&M’s” line of chocolate candies. The nation went into uproar, and Hershey’s needed to dump the evidence, quick. They flew air carriers out over Lavandria and dumped all the offending candy coating, effectively giving the entire jungle a hard candy shell. At about three pm, every day, the local fauna get so hopped up on the sugar crust covering their plant life that they go wild! They run amok all over the place, so fast that Blinky was barely able to capture this one in frame!

Alex: Haha, that’s hilarious. The infamous “Running of the Garbler” is well known to the Lavandrian natives. This photograph perfectly captures the Olympic figure of the Crowned Berry Garbler. The graceful strides of this beautiful creature are indeed hypnotizing.

Alex: Oh my, that looks painful. Viewers should note the careful construction of the Garbler’s nesting site. They only nest in the shallow areas of Lavandria’s premier river, The River of the Jungle of Lavandria. They build the nest out of small twigs, leaves, small mammals, and their own spittle. Because The River of the Jungle of Lavandria floods almost daily nest building is largely an act of futility. Note that if successfully, the top of the nest is lined using only black and white colored materials. This leads many Lavandria adventurers to lose many dominos, newspaper clippings, and dice to the thieving Crowned Berry Garbler.

Colin: Our viewers may be wondering how such a small animal is able to gestate an egg larger than its own body. The answer is simple, although surprising. Crowned Berry-Garblers have an alternate dimension inside their body, about the size of a small Florida bungalow. Inside that bungalow the Berry-Garbler’s helpful maid and servant Benita cares for the egg until it is ready to come to the outside world. All of this, of course, doesn’t aid the Berry-Garbler in the expulsion of the large spiky egg from it’s body. Hence our very tired and relieved friend, pictured above.

Alex: And I believe that wraps up another episode of Unusual Specimens. You should all feel very fortunate that this was completed in less than one year. Join us next week as we do something else. Maybe Coxswain would like to sign us off of this episode with a catchphrase of his own, then conclude with a snapshot an early explorer holding a newborn Garbler. What say you, Coxswain?

Colin: