The Ursus Verses Read online

  The Ursus Verses

  volume 1

  Nathan Waddell

  Copyright © 2020 by Nathan Waddell

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  For Michelle. It’s ok that I dedicated a book about all this silliness with attendant poo jokes and puns to you right?

  Contents

  1. Greetings from the Woods

  Homie and the Witch

  E=mc²

  Ode to The Ordovician

  Shine on You Crazy Elephant

  The Mother Superior

  Yog Sothoth’s Contest of Doom

  Larvae

  Again, the Abomination

  Dams

  Godbear

  The Winged Whale

  The F.A.F.A.F.

  Sir Swampy Joe and the Plasma Dragon

  Part I

  Part II

  Part III

  Part IV

  Ragnarok

  Bear Droppings

  (the how and the why and the where)

  The Kaiju Jubilee

  2. A Warning

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  Greetings from the Woods

  Who knew that poo would be my legacy? Sigh. It started innocently enough in 2002. I heard about blogs, and I decided to start one. Since I guess I was 12 in 2002 (wait, is my math right? I was born in 1974…) I chose the title “Pooing in the Woods” because my online handle was, um, Homie Bear. And again-sigh. Most of my posts were just puns based on the word poo. Normally I might be tempted to sweep these embarrassing facts under the rug, but as I said, this whole thing sort of turned into a legacy. Or if not a legacy, definitely a whole thing.

  The Homie Bear name came from a trip to hike the Chilkoot Trail I took with a friend in 2002. We were calling each other Dawg because we were 12 and it was 2002. Then I realized that two Canadian guys calling each other Dawg was ridiculous so I started calling him Bear. In Skagway we saw a stuffed bear standing in a cliched rapper pose and we pointed to it and said Homie Bear.

  Not content to just have the handle and the title I also started weaving in a character named Homie Bear into the writings, in poems and whatnot. A self-insert character, acting mostly as a trickster, and somewhat ambiguous as to whether he was a grizzly bear or a polar bear or? In the following pages you will find a couple of poems starring him, but he fades away over time and most of my stuff doesn’t feature him at all.

  This first volume mainly covers those earlier years, when I was finding my footing and not too worried about being good at it. Which, if I may flatter myself a little, is how I became good at it, eventually. And for that I can thank Homie Bear and his habit of Pooing in the Woods.

  Thank you for reading! And thank you as well to the amazing Sarah Mills of ninjabeaver.com who made me some amazing bear drawings that adorned my blog way back when and which now provides the cover for this book!

  -Nathan (Homie Bear) Waddell

  October 22, 2020

  Homie and the Witch

  There was a magic wizard bear who knew a lot of spells

  He cast them in his castle in the woods by where he dwells

  The spells were simple harmless stuff that bears appreciate

  Berry creeks and salmon trees and more time to hibernate

  But then an evil witch queen came and told the bear to exit

  She had come to rule the woods and maybe even hex it

  The wizard bear was sad and cried "Oh my, oh my, oh me!"

  He went to the cave of his friend who was a bear named Homie

  Homie took one look at him and said "Hey whatsa matter?

  You look so sad and lonely but you’ve gotten nice and fatter"

  "An evil witch queen came and took away my castle

  I'd try to get it back from her but it will be a hassle"

  Homie said "Do not fear, I will get it back

  I'll just plan a special sneaky slick surprise attack!"

  So Homie ventured to the castle dressed up as a crone

  The witch queen let her in since she thought he was her clone

  "So good to see you dear, come on in and eat

  I just cooked up some eye of newt for a special treat!"

  Homie waited for the queen to gobble and to guzzle

  Before he took off his mask and revealed his mighty muzzle

  The queen was shocked and scared but she waved her magic wand

  And some frightful monsters appeared from the Great Beyond

  Homie fought and crushed and smashed each and every demon

  And ate the evil witch queen who went down his throat still screamin'

  And so the magic wizard bear got his castle back

  And conjured Homie an extra special magic Berry Snack!

  E=mc²

  Einstein wrote a poem

  Describing the shape of the universe

  So I'm going to see if he was right

  How could I not?

  Lightspeed and time travel and

  every wonder I can think of

  And even more that I can't

  A whole galaxy of experience

  spiral arms scooping up adventure

  For whoever wants to find it

  Quasars and pulsars

  Offer quantum probabilities

  I can't wait

  So good-bye Mom

  Good-bye Dad

  and everyone else

  I love you all

  I'll be back in a few years

  though it might seem longer

  (Depending how fast I go -

  what with relativity and all)

  And when I get back

  we'll share new poems

  and old laughter

  Describing the shape of our lives

  We'll toast Einstein

  and each other

  and we’ll say

  All is right with the universe

  Ode to The Ordovician

  Working on my paper for days I am confused

  My brain is overtired and my body’s been abused

  If only I were an invertebrate critter

  From the Late Ordovician, I would not be so bitter

  Creatures without backbones can still be heroic

  Especially those from the Paleozoic

  It’s true all they did was filter some crud

  And they spent all their lives lying in mud

  But that kind of life sounds mighty appealing

  As I sit in the library and stare at the ceiling

  A brachiopod cared little about papers or marks

  And didn’t have to worry about getting eaten by sharks

  Life in the Ordovician sounds awful nice

  If one could just avoid extinction by ice

  Shine on You Crazy Elephant

  I met an elephant whose name was Dwight

  He was always scared at night

  He said he once had had a dream

  That had really made him scream

  In this dream some tiny mice

  Made Dwight's blood turn to ice

  And since an elephant can not forget

  Any nightmare that made them sweat

  Dwight was now Achlu-Musophobic

  So he skipped night-time aerobics

  But he still had to go on Dawn Patrol

  (Still quite dark unless the moon is full)

  His tusks, they shook and his ears, they flapped

  They say that even his poo, it crapped

&nbsp
; And so he had to hatch a plan

  Horton helped him, and Tarzan

  What they did is they took Dwight's trunk

  And cleared it of all the snot and gunk

  And stuck a flashlight way up in there

  With lots of batteries to spare

  Dwight can now walk in the night

  Done with the danger of dying of fright

  As an added bonus he no longer whines

  For now he is known as the Elephant Who Shines!

  The Mother Superior

  The Mother Superior is constantly vigilant

  In making sure all of her nuns are all digilant

  She doesn't put up with making up words

  Her convent is full of grammatical nerds

  So imagine the irony when she nailed up a sign

  That stated her new Nunnery Rule Number Nine:

  "From this point hereforeward I will severiously punish

  Any of you nuns caught acting unnunnish!"

  Yog Sothoth’s Contest of Doom

  Calling all Cthulhoids!

  * * *

  Another thousand years has come and gone and you know what that means- it's time for you Great Old Ones to take pen in tentacle and submit your entry for Yog Sothoth's Writing Contest* of Doom.

  * * *

  In our inter-dimensional travels we have all too often been witness to unspeakable horrors and dread things that should not be. I want to hear about them! Send me your accounts of your most terrifying vomit-inducing nightmares. Was it a cute puppy? A lover giving its mate a flower? A child saying its first word? Nothing is too obscene for this contest! The fouler the better.

  * * *

  I, Yog Sothoth, dread lord of the Nine Underworlds of R'lyeh, along with my fellow judge Aphoom-Zhah, shall choose the winning entry. The winner shall receive a century long, all-inclusive cruise through (and between!) the ten dimensions of Sekkurash.

  * * *

  To enter simply submit your manuscript, written in mortal blood, along with the entry fee of 666 innocent souls to me via arcane induction of

  the Vorvadocth, found on page 37 of your Illustrated Necronomicon, by 5:00 PM, Monday, October 31st.

  * * *

  *Contest void to denizens of the Seventh Corpuscular Hell, and in Quebec.

  Larvae

  What Terry was supposed to be doing was researching the anti-bacterial properties of squid eggs. That's what his master's thesis was about, and it was also the reason he had received a $25,000 grant from the Teuthis Foundation. But Terry had a side project. He was running the Circus Minimus in his little lab in the BioSci Building at the University of British Columbia.

  His lab was stuffed with vats full of squid in various stages of their life cycles. Eggs, larvae, and egg-laying adults. Mostly of the California squid, Loligo opalescens, but a couple of other species as well. Getting access to other marine invertebrates was relatively easy, too- he was popular amongst the grad students in his department. On Friday nights they would gather for a spectacle of Roman proportions. Squid, crab and lobsters would square off in gladiatorial contests while cheering students bet on the outcomes. Sometimes even fish were brought in.

  Terry found that older animals tended to be wary of confrontations, and that the larval forms, if stuck in a small enough container, would be more aggressive. And hungry. There were still times when nothing happened but in a satisfying number of fights only one animal remained in a tank. To change things up, Terry occasionally cut off a tentacle or a claw from one of the combatants. Terry made a fair bit of money keeping books on the bets before each bout.

  On this particular Friday night before Reading Week there was a full house as someone had invited his fraternity brothers along. Terry knew that secrecy was important, but he didn't mind the extra income from bets and selling a little weed. Who knew marine biology could be so profitable?

  For the undercard, a free-swimming larval lobster was placed into a tank with a spiny young Alaskan king crab. Heavy betting was on the crab, even though a fair number of the spectators would have been hard pressed to tell the difference between the crustaceans. Or care if they could. As long as one killed the other, preferably in a gruesome and hilarious manner, they would leave satisfied. Winning a bet would be a bonus.

  The googly-eyed crab spotted the lobster swimming above, looking like Superman with its claws held out in front, and swam towards it. But Superlobster had the aerial advantage and swooped down on its prey, slicing off an eye before gobbling the king. The crowd went wild, not minding how short the fight was at all. Terry considered posting videos of the fights on the internet to see if he could somehow make money that way, but decided that it would be better to not risk attracting the attention of PETA or some other stupid animal rights group.

  The second fight promised to be even better than the first, but turned out to be a dud. One of Terry's buddies brought in a lingcod and was placed in a tank with a squid hatchling. The lingcod completely ignored the squid and then went belly-up for some reason. Since lingcods are notoriously hard to kill there was some grumbling about a fix, but the frat boys were appeased when Terry fed the carcass to a lobster.

  Before the Battle Royale of the evening could commence, between Superlobster and the squid, the laboratory doors burst open and campus security rushed in. Shining their flashlights in everyone's face, they confiscated beer cans and caused a ruckus completely out of proportion to their number. The chaos had the desired effect of stupefying everyone in the lab, except for Terry. He very smoothly apologized for having open alcohol in a university lab, promised never to do it again, thereby deftly taking attention away from the illegal bloodfights. The campus cops were satisfied with confiscating the booze, and let everyone go so they could resume the party at The Pit. On his way out, Terry hurriedly poured the container with the lobster and the squid into one of the vats of eggs.

  The lab was quiet now, and dark. In the egg vat the squid larva tentatively tried out its chromatophores. The eerie iridescence attracted the superlobster, who swam towards the light.

  The squid warily backed away, but the lobster emitted special chemicals from its nephropores- which is to say it peed from a hole near its antennae. These chemicals carried an aroma of submission-with-threat-if-attacked. You might render such a chemical message in English thusly: “I won't hurt you if you won't hurt me.”

  The squid answered this unusual pheromone with a squirt of murky ink, embedded in which was a chemical of acquiescence. In this manner an uneasy and wholly unprecedented truce was established between Homarus americanus and Loligo opalescens.

  If that was the only amazing thing that had happened in that darkened laboratory, it would have passed without notice. But another process was set in motion that would take generations of grad students more diligent than Terry to fully decipher. This soupy mixture of chemicals interacted with the reagents Terry had previously spilled. The bacteria coating the squid eggs that Terry was supposed to be studying absorbed the whole mess and digested them into amino acids and exotic proteins. These waste products were in turn reabsorbed by our two invertebrate friends, altering their RNA. They changed.

  The still-developing bodies of the larvae merged together, fusing into a symbiotic organism. Never before had evolution happened so quickly, so serendipitously, so furiously. The new amalgam animal molted and grew, cannibalizing eggs to fuel the metabolic maelstrom. For a full ten days it matured in the dark, and it waited.

  After Reading Week, during which Terry engaged in many acts of random debauchery and committed some minor crimes, the BioSci Building at UBC once more bustled with activity. Terry decided it was time to check on his squiddies, wondering idly how many of the suckers had died while he was at Whistler. Maybe he could hit up the Teuthis Foundation for more money to get new eggs. He unlocked the door to his lab, cursing his hangover-induced headache as he entered and turned on the lights.

  The squobster at first retreated from this unfamiliar stimulus. It sidled its a
rmoured mantle to the bottom of the vat, its body changing colour at the same time. Terry was too preoccupied to notice. Emboldened, it sent out its two tentacles into the alien environment outside its tank. Seeing motion from the corner of his eye, Terry whirled and saw a nightmare. He had just enough time to wonder if he had smoked some bad weed. Then the tentacles grabbed him and pulled, and Terry was quickly submerged and constricted by eight arms. Being too big for the tank, however, it fell to the squobster's serrated cutting claws to render him into more manageable pieces- bite-sized chunks, as it were. If Terry screamed or died instantly with a minimum of suffering, no one can now say.

  The saltwater of the tanks and vats in the lab was soon saturated with a molecule emitting an odor of pleasure-and-relief-at-averted-threat, which we might translate as, “Take that you sumbitch!”

  Again, the Abomination

  Again, the ancient abomination awakens

  virile vileness, destruction distilled, poetic putrescence

  an ode to obscenity, reality’s requiem

  its carapace a spiked and spiny agglomeration of illogical hues

  the interstices of a thousand incisors crusted with remnants of exotic nourishment

  neutronium-eyed, its stomach a black hole, a pulsar for a brain