Jungle

-Life-

Welcome to the Jungle Life page. Here you will find brief descriptions of all kinds of jungle flora and fauna. Much of it is submitted by various catelves. If you have any ideas you are welcome to either +mail Bria with the kind of plant or animal and a brief description of major points. For plants important information to include is: medicinal value (if any), food value, where it grows and how abundantly and what else might eat it. For animals important information is: whether we eat it, if our bonds eat it, how common it is and anything else you want to add. :) I reserve the right to edit the descriptions or send them back for you to edit. You may submit them via email (cat_chiefs@geocities.com) or +mail. If you use email tell me your character name somewhere so I know who you are.

Prickly Fruit - A bright green fruit that grows high in the jungle trees and has prickly hairs on the outside like a cactus. The spines are moveable, bending if you run your hand along the side, only dangerous if you push on the point. When ripe this fruit is bright red on the inside and very juicy. It is a favorite food of the Skyplumes and Limbleapers. Prickly fruit grow deeper in the jungle than the chasm.

Sweetleaves - a deep green leaf with frilly outer edge and touched with red, rather like a spanish dancer's skirt. It drips of a sweet (honey-like) substance and acts as a calming agent. Sweetleaves grow in open spots where the sun breaks through the canopy and lights the forest floor. A good place to look is along the river and chasm. Elves will collect the 'sweetsap' to sweeten food and tea. Some elves, those who know, use three leaves as a minor aphrodesiac. The plant can be steeped dried in tea or eaten fresh to calm a patient. They need to be eaten fresh for their other properties to have any noticable effect.

Itchy Moss - A soft green and brown tree moss. It grows on some trees in the deeper jungle paths. It makes the skin red and very itchy. It is harmless but irritating. It can be used as an irritant, or on bruises to make them heal faster. Some elves would rather have the bruise than the itch, though.

Stink plant - It stinks like mad and prankster type elves have fun with it. It has long, broad leaves that surround a central stock with a white flower that has a scent discernable only by wolfriders that is a sweet counterpoint to the oderiferous leaves. It grows in damp places where the sun doesn't often touch it directly. It also makes a good bug repellant when ground and added to yellowroot leaves and water. This repellant has a spicy-sweet smell from the overpowering yellowroot leaves.

Esor Bloom - A bright flower which comes in pink, red and rose. The blooms are large and exotic. The leaves, when added to food gives it a zingy flavor (used as an herb). The root is great for stomach ailments. The plant grows in large patches in the shade at the foot of the tall jungle trees. It is very easy to find, since it grows in such abundance.

Yellowroot - This fat, meaty, edible root is a major source of food (when found) for jungle tribes. Yellowroot is the root of a small, inconspicuous plant which grows in the dense jungles, and is difficult to find in the wild. The leaves, as mentioned before make a strong bug repellant when mixed with Stink plant leaves. This plant is more easily identified by it's spicy-sweet smell than by it's small flowers. Bristle Boar dig up the roots and eat them as well.

Spiceroot - The foliage of the spiceroot blends well with that of the jungle in which the root grows. This bulbous, woody root is ground into powder and used in cooking in small amounts to make a kind of gingery taste. Tinctures of the root eases coughing when the paste is spread across the chest and throat. The dried and sliced root reduces fever when drunk as a tea (one of the few tasty medications Kiera administers).

Sweetsticks - These are tall, hollow reeds which are popular for their sweet juice, since it is easier to collect than the sweetsap of sweetleaves. Elves harvest the juice by chewing or pounding the stalks. The stalks are built of tough fibers from which the elves weave baskets, and the hollow reeds are used as snorkels. Sweetsticks grow in moist, sunny, low-lying areas.

Goldensweet - This huge, round golden food-fruit is highly prized by all jungle tribes. The skin is eadible and covered with soft down that can be scraped off with a dull knife by a picky elf. The meat of the fruit is the same bright golden color. It has a giant pit that the elves have found no use for whatsoever. Each fruit is large enough to feed several elves; goldensweets grow on small trees in the more heavily forested areas.

Whistling Leaves - This exotic plant gets it's name from the holes in the leaves which make a whistling sound when struck by a breeze. The plant is normally found in the marshier areas of the jungles and is fairly rare this far south. Characters knowledgeable in healing or plant lore can presume to be capable of preparing the plant as a diuretic, which can purge diseases of the blood out of the body. They are pretty useless otherwise.

Berries - Most of these are not native to the colder regions, however a couple varieties are. There are of course Dreamberries and then there are Blackberries, native to the area near Ravenholt. A few seeds and a small patch of ground were how they started, tended carefully. The other varieties are a red berry, a brown berry, which is really more of a rust color, and a golden berry, which is nearly the color of the sun.

Orangeroot - A bland root of a small bush like plant it closely resembles the yam or sweet potatoe. It is most often found along the river not less than 15' from the banks. The root can be baked and then sliced or made into a mash paste and mixed with other things to maked a tortilla like flat bread.

YellowFruit - A large yellow globe of fruit, nearly twice the size of the Sunfruit in Sorrow's End and ranging in flavor from sweet to sour. The fruits are however much like the sunfruit in that it has lobes of meat that may be peeled apart in sections. It is also very juicy, being one of the messier fruits to eat, but also one of the more enjoyed.

Bloodworms - These are essentially gigantic 6-foot leeches. They live underwater, but can crawl on land for some distance. Even so, they only leave the water in moist environments (such as swamps). A given river (like ours) might be known to be infested with these dreaded worms, and hence impassable in certain areas. At the moment our river is not infested, but those who go exploring might encounter these creatures in a pond or other river.

Sword-feet - These fast, bipedal, pack-running dinosaurs are about 8 feet from snout to the tip of their balancing tail. They are clever and vicious predators, and quite intelligent for dinosaurs. In attacking, they will grasp their prey with their forelegs and slash enthusiastically with their scimitar-like hindclaws. Sword-feet feed on anything that won't eat them first. Like the Fin-Backs, they primarily live in the hotter equatorial regions, and have little reason to enter the temperate zones. Catelves and other jungle dwellers are the most likely tribes to encounter these creatures. They always attack on the run, using their forelegs to grasp a target. If they miss, they continue on and turn to make another pass. If they hit, they hold on and bite, then slash their prey with their hind claws. When the prey is dead, they will immediately carry it off if it is small enough to hold and run with. Otherwise, they will drop the prey and attack another target in the immediate area, continuing until nothing but sword-feet are left alive. Then, the pack eats.

Crocodilians - These large saurians live in swamps and rivers. They are active predators, eating fish, snakes, and animals coming for drinking water. They are not social animals, but are often found in large numbers. They are faster in the water than on land, and are likeliest to attack a victim in the water or close on the shore. Moderately large crocodilians are about 3 yards long.

Fireplumes - Brightly feathered (parrots/macaw-type) birds of mostly red. The Fireplumes exist primarily on nuts that they gather. Their beaks are heavy and strong for the purpous of crushing shells. These birds, along with their fruit-eating counterparts, the Skyplumes, are very common around the camp. They are not often killed, as the meat isn't terribly tasty and their song is enjoyable. Dropped feathers are frequently worked into the hair or clothing of an elf. Sometimes the bond cats hunt these avians and feathers are obtained from their catches.

Skyplumes - Brightly feathered (parrots/macaw-type) birds of mostly blue. Skyplumes eat mostly fruit, getting into Goldensweet and Prickly Fruit rather often. They have much smaller beaks than the Fireplumes do, but they are just as common and as rarely killed. They are accented by green along the wing primaries and a wedge of the color on the heads. Their song is louder and a little more harsh than that of the Fireplumes'.

Squawkers - Smaller birds of plain green (plain parrot-type). They make a dry squawking noise that is rather hard on tender elfin ears. These birds are quite tasty and gladly killed. Their green is nowhere near as brilliant as the greens on the Skyplumes, but the feathers are used, just the same. These birds have large beaks for nut cracking, but they will also eat smaller berries.

LongTooth - These solitary big cats, similar to saber-toothed tigers, live in the jungles and grassy areas, but also survive well in cold climates. LongTooths hunt by ambush, and are intelligent enough not to attack clearly dangerous foes. They are huge and not easily killed. They are not terribly common in the jungle, but elves must be wary when they walk.

Fin-Backs - These monsters are leftovers from the equivalent of dinosaurs on Two Moons. They are found in equatorial lands, and sometimes in swamps in more temperate regions. In Book Two, Skywise sees one while hunting for whistling leaves for Cutter. They are herbivores and band together in large numbers in the southern swamps; fin-backs in more temperate regions are likely to be rogue males. These creatures are large enough that they are often avoided rather than hunted, although their eggs or young might be considered delicacies by various tribes. Our tribe does consider them quite good but they are very rare as we have cleared out our home territory of these dangerous creatures. They are extremely protective of young and territory. One must travel into deeper jungle to hunt them. It is possible for a Fin-Back to enter our territory again.

Bristle Boar - Similar to Earth's peccaries, these wild pigs live in the hills around Sorrow's End and in other, wilder, sections of the continent. They are hunted by most predators, including elves, and can sometimes turn on their pursuers and do significant damage with their powerful tusks. They are the main meat source for the elves of Sorrow's End. They are also very common around certain areas of the jungle. The meat of out Bristle Boar are tougher than the Sorrow's End variety and the animal itself is a little larger.

Snakes - These gigantic constrictors live in jungles and rain forests. Some are water snakes, some live and hunt in trees, and some are ground dwellers. Constrictors about 8 yards long are potential elf eaters. We have many varieties of snakes. Some are or will be listed here as they are given names and attributes, others may remain nameless. We do have some of these constrictors in the Forevergreen, though they aren't extremely common. Poisenous snakes that are much smaller can be deadly. Kiera has some anti-toxins that she tries to pass out that can counteract the effects of many of these snakes.

Spiders - There are thousands of types of spiders. The giant variety should be rare, and expected to live in whatever areas might be likely to house such creatures, such as fetid jungles or dank forests. They hunt by spreading their webs over likely areas; when prey runs under the web, the spider races to the spot and spews more webbing over it. The spider may drape its web over a trail, or silently wall off a clearing where elves or humans are camping. Spider webbing is not flammable, though heat will shrivel it. Poisenous spiders that are extremely tiny are common in the Jungle, as are the larger kinds. There are a few of the giant spiders around, but not in the main Catelf territory.

That's all we have now. Coming soon are descriptions of several snakes, hard-shells, and other animals and plants. See above information if you would like to add to our lists. Long-tails(longtailed monkeys) and limbrunners(primates), skitters (rats and other rodents), snooters(anteaters), runners/leapers(deer and gazelle that live on the plains) all need entries. If you want to add other birds, snakes, spiders, plants or anything else +mail or email me as well.

Sections marked with this symbol after them have been taken or adapted from the NEWS entries on TwoMoons MUSH. Sections after that are my comments on the animals.

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