Star-nosed Mole

When I was a kid, I fancied myself a horror story writer, and one of the first tales I sent out for possible publication was a spine-tingler called "The Invasion of the Dog People." Inexplicably, the New Yorker rejected it. ("Aim high," my dad would tell his four-grader.) Maybe I should have chosen a different night-terror of an animal. There's something truly macabre in the appearance of this Star-nosed Mole that I found, inexplicably deceased, on the trail. There's also something fabulous in its weird looking nose: 22 highly mobile and exquisitely sensitive tentacles that can detect prey about as quickly as nerves are capable of working. I have no idea how the mole met its end. There wasn't a mark on it, so most likely it just arrived at the end of the line, its powerful digging—and swimming—claws still, its marvelous nose blind.