Illustration: A female holloworm ensnares a pocket gopher.

If we consider the pocket gopher as the architect of the rural underground, the giant holloworm is the leech.  Not exactly a “worm” in the usual sense, holloworms are anatomically tubular and conform their thin bodies to tunnel walls, allowing free passage to gophers and other critters.  In the rare event that these deep tunnel dwellers are dug up, they’re inevitably overlooked as slimy dirt or a decomposed sock. Most interestingly, the male holloworms traverse tunnels conveyor-style with the same inside-out motion as those “slippery water snake" toys from 1983.  Gastronomic pacifists, they mainly absorb nutrients from the soil, which clings readily to it’s sticky exterior, which is technically-speaking, an inverted digestive tract. Females on the other hand don’t travel by their own locomotion.  Instead, they tend one spot until opportunity allows them to clamp onto an unsuspecting passer-through, such as a gopher or snake, or cling stickily to a male holloworm, which will typically flat-roll her conveyor-style through several-hundred yards of tunnel, leaving behind a goopy film of fertilized residue, which matures with time into new holloworms.

Illustration: Tiny earwax bees generally evade notice even by the ear doctor.

Earwax bees admittedly stretch the definition of ‘irrelevant.’ While true bees, they lack the wax-producing glands of other bees. Thus, these bees not only have learned to “homestead” in waxy ear canals — they also know where to find the waxiest of them. While music-lovers have pummeled their ears for decades, the preponderance of waxy-eared iPod abusers has created what one could call a “revolution in evolution.” This is because the tiny ear wax bee spends so much time “surfing” in high sound pressure level environments that, in quiet moments, it may quite innocently beat its wings in habitual patterns, solely from muscle memory. The extraordinary result is identical to the effect of “hypersonic” speakers playing in one’s ear canals: phantom songs, disembodied voices, and full-fledged rock concerts originating from inside one’s head. Besides the ramifications for schizophrenia and common audio persistence phenomena, it’s further hypothesized that dogs who bark obsessively may simply be reacting to earwax bees who “know only one word,” as it were.

Illustration: Viewed upside down, Beer Puppies are one of the more adorable microbes we consume.

Similar to Daphnia, Beer Puppies are microscopic crustaceans adapted to weakly-alcoholic environments, and are most dependably found inhabiting hairline scratches on the insides of beer kegs, where carbon dioxide bubbles tend to collect. Though many are washed away with each recycling of the keg contents, enough are typically able to hide within moist crevices to pass along another generation to the next fresh batch. Reproduction is parthenogenic, again similar to daphnia. But rather than eggs, each beer puppy can be seen under a high-powered microscope to contain a dozen or more generations, each generation recursively revealing exactly one smaller replica of itself. Though this reproductive cycle happens quickly, with each “Russian Doll” birthing itself within a day after its parent, this inefficient litter-of-one survival strategy invites wonder into how it has survived as a species at all.

Wee Narwhal F.A.Q.

What is the Journal of Imaginary and Irrelevant Creatures?


It’s a site dedicated to featuring original research regarding the illumination and appreciation of imaginary and irrelevant creatures.


Is this a real scholarly journal?


Scholarly enough that we question the definition of real, often.


What kinds of submissions are you looking for?


The Journal publishes well-written abstracts and thoughtful illustrations of creatures that are most correctly categorized in the taxonomy as “C. Imaginaria,” with a bias towards those that are coincidentally both ubiquitous and unimportant.


Do the creatures need to be alive?


A primary consideration is that the creatures are alive in a meaningful sense, but they must not exist in any sense prior to publication in the journal.


What kinds of creatures do not qualify?


Given the plethora of outlets for fantasy writers, we will not be entertaining entries about unicorns, dragons, gnomes, nargles, or the like. These types of submissions fail on several counts: extreme shortage of originality, high relevance due to popularity, and inadmissable ontology, i.e. as fantasy creatures, their non-existence is already assumed, making them exempt from the critical scrutiny required for scholarly amusement.


Can you please define “imaginary”?


Your creatures must be real. That is, they must be defined as speculatively living in our everyday reality. However since their ontological status is dubious, the best we can say is that they are imaginary.


Judging a creature to be “irrelevant” seems kinda not nice. What do you mean?


The journal wishes to support activism towards the cause of what you might consider to be the “misfits” of the creature-sphere. Therefore, as our prerogative, we will give preference to research that illuminates organisms that may otherwise go unnoticed by academic researchers with reputations at stake. While our standards are by no means lax, we are primarily a creative organization, who will weigh a persuasive abstract and illustration partly on its entertainment value.


As a matter of reflection, many of these “misfit” creatures will be found, both metaphorically and literally, in the same places as the most irrelevant of us. That is, hiding in broad daylight, right in front of your eyes. They might be extraordinary only in their quietness or ability to make themselves small in the presence of others. They gravitate towards the underground and hidden places, and may even be escaping your view by standing in the shadow of your own tallness. They are everywhere, and there are more of them than anyone knows.


How do I submit my research to the Journal?


As the Journal wishes to retain first publishing rights, the best way to submit will be to send your submission in an email containing an illustration and a 200 word abstract. Direct your email to one of the Editors who is closest to your field of study. The Editors page will tell you a little about each Editor and explain how to contact them.


How will I know if my submission is accepted?


In most cases, if the submission is deemed ready for publication, it will be queued up for future posting and you will receive a reply email telling you approximately when it will be published. It is also possible that your email will be returned to you suggesting that you edit it somewhat before resubmitting.


What happens if my paper is rejected?


Since the Journal is intended for humor, we would like to have fun with the rejection process. Therefore, if we find your submission entertaining, but for some reason inappropriate for this particular journal, we will stamp it with our official “rejection” stamp and attach our rejection letter, so that you may post it on your own blog. This of course gives us some free advertising at the same time as enforcing our submission criteria. In rare cases, with your permission, we may reblog your rejected submission on a related site, or in exceptional cases, on Wee Narwal itself for instructive and entertainment value.


Of course since the submission process happens by email, you may privately choose whether to reblog any or all parts of your rejected submission.


How long will it take to find out if my submission was accepted?


This will depend on our popularity and backlog. We will try to find new editors if the backlog becomes too great to handle.


How can I become an editor?


Editors must be invited by the Editor-in-Chief, usually after a track record of high-quality published submissions. If you are interested in becoming a contributing editor, please send an email to the editor: at the geemail, jollilama