Totem Animals: Horseshoe Crab

Horseshoe Crab

Horseshoe crab is the oldest of all animals. He has been here since just after the earth formed through the coalescence and compression of billions of cubic meters of interstellar dust.

Horseshoe crab arrived as a seed planted in the center of a meteor that plummeted into earth's primordial ocean. There, the seed awakened, and out crawled horseshoe crab - the planet's sentinel creature.

Underneath its brown shell, the crab is delicate. Its legs are soft, feeling the ocean's floor and using its modified front legs to collect food and pass it to its mouth.

Horseshoe crab's tail traces pathways in the sand. Infant snails, eels, manta rays and sea cucumbers follow the trails to learn what they are and how to live.

When the crab dies, it washes up on the shore and releases its blood. The blood seeps into the sand where it hardens and forms chunks of corlithian- the mineral used to treat sadness in whales. Its blood is blue - the only blue blood of any creature on earth. The first blood.

Totem Animals: Owl

Owl

Owl is the world's stealthiest animal, and the most deadly on wings. Its mastery of the element of surprise is unparalleled, and it applies this tactic with invariable success. Every part of the owl's body is designed to make it absolutely silent. The owl's feathers are hand-woven by faceless beings who live on an underground moon, where all owls are assembled. These being beings are responsible for creating all nocturnal animals, which include owls, bats, raccoons, scorpions, mink, moths and the lemurs of Madagascar, which are their specialty.

The owl's dish-like face funnels sound to its earholes, which are installed asymmetrically in their skulls. This asymmetry allows owls to triangulate in on their prey in the darkness of night. An owl's ears are so sharp, it can hear a mouse peeing on a cotton ball.

Owls also receive weak messages from ancient satellites put into orbit by now-extinct races. The owl's whisper these messages to their prey before crushing them in their talons and eating them.

Totem Animals: Frog

Frog

Frog holds the world up from beneath his secret pond. Each fall, frog swallows all the mud he can hold, collecting it with his long, sticky tongue. The mud contains the memories of all life that came before. For the world to continue, frog must remember anew each year. He consumes the mud for several weeks, filling his stomach until it presses all the other organs aside. Just before burrowing deep under the pond floor to hibernate over the winter, frog takes one last gulp of mud, and along with it, a single oyster's pearl. During hibernation, he will digest the mud, taking it into his cells and remembering each plant and animal whose liquefied remains make up his special sustenance. As the days get warmer, and the mud in frog's stomach is gone, all that remains is the pearl. He swims to the surface of the pond, and spits it into the sky where it becomes spring's new moon.