Reposted from May 21, 2013:
I was rummaging through my hard-drive looking for old, random files to delete when I came across this photo my friend, Heidi Kortman, was fortunate enough to take a while back of a fleuder.
If you have read my books, then you are already aware of the odd little creatures named fleuders.
Here are a few facts about fleuders that you might find interesting:
Bjorn has never seen a fleuder anywhere else except in Astarkand.
Fleuder anatomy is highly unusual, consisting of six stubby legs supporting a lump of a body about the size of a round loaf of bread, covered in brittle hairs. A fleuder’s mouth is located centrally on its belly. No one so far has been able to find its eyes or nose. It appears to understand its world primarily through its senses of taste and touch.
Fleuders make several variations on an odd, grumbly-grindy noise, mostly heard as expressions of alarm or disgust.
They eat leaf detritus, and are often seen scrabbling about under the decaying leaves of the northern cabbage palm, but they aren’t particularly picky. While they do quite well in captivity, most folk agree that the only almost-interesting thing a fleuder does is scrabble about in the dirt. Most pet fleuders end up living in their owners’ gardens under a convenient bush…
Rumor has it that fleuders weren’t an original part of creation, but were created from other sources by the black sorceress Gunhild. They might have been one of her earlier efforts; a mad sort of combination of sea urchin, star fish (for the extra legs), and guinea pig.
Whether or not they were created by the sorceress, fleuders appear to be wholly harmless aside from their tendency to breed like rabbits.
Fleuder terms:
1 fleuder
2 fleuderkind
fleuderma (female)
fleuderpa (male)
fleuderlings (baby fleuders)
an ingratitude = a group of fleuders
an exodus = a significantly sized group of fleuders bent on crawling or falling into moving water, especially the sea.