Week 10 Story: The Ustu'tli at the Museum

The Fernbank Museum's new exhibit was drawing huge crowds, to the delight of their marketing manager. Who could resist the giant, nearly complete skeleton of a dinosaur that resembled nothing more closely than an enormous snake with legs?  Particuarly one that had been discovered in their same state, up in the mountains of North Georgia. Hunter, a 10 year old boy who lived nearby, certainly could not. He loved anything to do with skeletons and dinosaurs, and had been begging his mother for months to visit the exhibit. 

Unfortunately, the same day that Hunter was planning to go to the museum, there was a solar eclipse. His mother told him to stay inside, as looking at the sun could blind him. The museum was not even going to be open to the public that day, so there was no point in going. 

Hunter was heartbroken. His dream was so close, yet so far. He decided to sneak out of his house and keep his eyes fixed on the ground. He knew the way quite well, and the roads were eerily empty. 

As he walked across Atlanta, he heard a very strange sound. It sounded like a deep, far-off ribbit. He cautiously looked around, but saw nothing. The day was growing darker and darker, until there was no light. He looked up and stood frozen in shock. The sun was not covered by the moon, but by a giant frog. 

Frog swallowing the sun. Web Source: Fox23.

Hunter decided that presumably the museum would know how to deal with a giant, sun-swallowing frog, so he ran as fast as he could without tripping over branches and pine-cones. He arrived breathless, and slipped inside an open door. The museum exhibits were dark, and no security guards blocked him from the dinosaurs.

Somewhere in the museum, a small animal bleated. 

The next thing Hunter knew, a thick, scaly body was moving past him. He ducked out of the way of a leg as it arched over him. Despite his terror, he suddenly realized what an amazing opportunity this was. An ancient, supposedly extinct animal had come to life before his eyes. 

By this time, the museum employees had become aware of the chaos in the exhibit hall. "It's an Ustu'tli!" screamed someone from the anthropology department. "It hates fire!" Another employee was frantically calling the police and the fire department.

Hunter ran around, chasing the ustu'tli. He knocked over a candle that had been lit in one of the offices, and fire began spreading around the building. The ustu'tli roared in pain as its scales began crackling in the heat. By the time the police got there, they were able to corner and shoot it. 

Suddenly, the sky grew bright again. All the noise from the chasing and shooting of the ustu'tli had scared the frog away from the sun. Hunter slipped back home quite satisfied with his experience of the eclipse and the ustu'tli. 

Author's note: I based this story on two different Cherokee stories. One says that eclipses are caused by a frog that swallows the sun, which is chased off when scared by guns and drums. The other involves the ustu'tli, a large snake with legs which bleated like a young fawn to scare off hunters. One hunter dared to enter its territory and defeated it with fire. The mountain it lived on in the story is actually found in North Georgia, so I decided to set it at the Fernbank museum which is found in Atlanta. 

Bibliography: James Mooney's Myths of the Cherokee, Link. 

Reading Notes: Cherokee Myths, Part B

I really enjoyed the story of the ball game between the birds and the animals. It's such a creative origin story for the bat. It also reminds me a bit of Dirty Paws.
The race between the Crane and the Hummingbird is a lot like the Tortoise and the Hare.
What is a huhu? Turns out it's probably a screech owl, a wahuhu. I'm more curious as to why people keep accidentally marrying animals, such as an owl or a frog.

Wow, the Uktena and the Ulunsu'ti are really fascinating. Snakes seem to play a really large role in these stories. Yet they do not seem necessarily evil, more just large and dangerous. I suppose snakes are one of the more dangerous creatures that live in the original Cherokee homeland. The snake with feet, the Ustu'tli, reminds me of a dinosaur. Perhaps it is based off one. I could write a story about how a dinosaur in a museum came to life and turned out to be the Ustu'tli. It would then have to be defeated with fire, like in the original story, but in a way that does not destroy the city, just cracks its scales. The other snake story I liked, about the boy with the unkind family who turned into a snake, makes the snakes seem even less evil. For him it is an escape. I am really curious as to whether snakes really dislike the smell of sweat, though I don't think I will experiment.

Copperhead. Web Source.

Cottonmouth. Web Source.

It's interesting that the hero, Agan-uni'tsi, who gets the diamond from the Uktena is not himself Cherokee. Medicine does not seem like quite an accurate translation of the power that Agan-uni'tsi and the Red Man of Lightning have. I wonder why it is called that. Perhaps because it is used in healing as well.

I really enjoyed this unit because of the combination of unfamiliar stories and familiar wildlife.

Bibliography: James Mooney's Myths of the Cherokee, link.

Wikipedia Trails: From Strawberry to Polyploid

I read about the origin of strawberries in the Cherokee stories and was curious as to where they were first grown.

Strawberry: Strawberry, at least for Wikipedia, refers to the garden strawberry that is cultivated and sold around the world. It is a hybrid of two types of strawberries, one from Chile and one from the United States, which were first bred together in Brittany, France. Strawberries are a good source of vitamin C and manganese and have positive health effects.

Chocolate-Covered Strawberries. Web Source: Wikipedia.

Fragraria: This is the genus to which belong wild strawberries. There are over 20 species that are found throughout the world. They vary based on how many copies of their basic chromosomes they have. Interestingly, strawberries are not true berries, and their "seeds" are actually something else called achenes.

Virginia Strawberry: This strawberry grows throughout the United States and Canada, and is one of the strawberry species that was used to hybridize the garden strawberry. This is presumably the strawberry mentioned in the story. It multiplies which new plants grow up from the rhizomes, which makes it rather invasive.

Polyploid: While most Eukaryotic organisms (ones that have a nucleus) have two copies of each chromosome, some, particularly plants, can have several. The Virginia Strawberry has eight copies of each chromosome.