My Little Wild Bowtruckles

North American Wiggentrees are rare, but some grow in shady spots in our forests. My wiggentree is deep in our woods on an old path near some stone ruins, and is known to be over a hundred years old. The bark is quite scaly and the trunk, nearly three feet broad. The tree has grown to fifty or sixty feet--pretty tall for a wiggentree. It bears a pretty, edible berry that grows in clusters. There are a few saplings in the woods, growing in mossy places where the ferns are very thick.

Our Appalachian bowtruckles are usually quite harmless. They do not mind us harvesting the sorbus berries, and will give up bark and branches to us without much trouble. Woe to the wizard who gets too greedy, though! Our bowtruckles will scratch their eyes out. The feisty fellows keep a stock of porcupine quills to use as weapons, in the rare event they feel threatened. This behavior is protected, as cutting down a bowtruckle's wiggentree is equal to home invasion under the law.

A local Appalachian witch, Anner Dunn, has made a lifelong study of American bowtruckles. She camps out and camouflages herself, because the little beasts are very shy. Dunn once attempted to tag individual bowtruckles, but spent the next few days picking porcupine quills out of her behind. Afterwards, she just took a copious notes.

Dunn Notes:

Identified Surnames of Bowtruckles on Pritchett land: Wiggentree, Wiggley, and Wickle.

Individuals: Twiggy and Twiggley (twins), Scritch, Vertie, "Bowleg," Twogg, Cuckleburr, Suze, Gramps, Knott, and Burl. Matching given names to surnames is a bit fuzzy.

Neighboring bowtruckle branches in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest: Bowtruckle, Bower, and Truckley.

Our bowtruckles have a long-standing though quiet feud w/the Black Walnut branch, of the nearby Cohutta Wilderness; "quiet," because they rarely encounter the enemy, since they hardly ever wander far from home. Dunn only learned of the feud when our Wiggleys attacked one of their own, a Wickle. His feet had gotten caked with black swamp mud, which they took to be the telltale black walnut stains of their enemy. Our branch has no animosity toward the American Holly, Dogwood, and Mountain Laurel bowtruckle branches. 

Food: most insects.

Seasonal delicacies: chiggers, mayflies, and wood lice. They love june bugs, which are getting scarce, and spicy fire ants. They also ferment dandelion wine, pokeberry wine, and fox grape.

Each year in season, they eat cicadas. There are feast years, due to the cyclical biology of cicada broods.

(My own observation: This summer was horrendous! It was the Feast of the Great Eastern Brood of Cicadas; they emerge once every seventeen years. Our bowtruckles partied for seven nights running and were, if possible, louder than the cicadas. Leading up to the cicada feast, the bowtruckles provoked a multitude of skunks into spraying. They like to baste fat cicadas in a brew of skunk juice and pokeberry wine. Some even pour this stinking mess into tree holes and soak in it!)

Originally composition, written for my Facebook group, Azkaban Escapees.