Review Assignment: Trickery and Guardians (Essay)

In no less than 300 words write about an encounter you had with one of the creatures in class. Describe how you got into the situation, what, if any preventative measures you took, what happened, how you got out of it. If you decide to do a picture, you will still need to include a 300 word essay to go with it.

Student Response

I encountered a Bowtruckle while I was visiting my brother in Todtnau, a little city in the South of Germany. There is a natural reserve in the forest near the town where only magical beings can enter. We were hiking, trying to take pictures of some of the magical creatures that live there. We heard a noise on the top of a tree, and my brother decided to climb a nearby pine to check what was up there. As he was getting close to the pine, he noticed something moving and called me. 

It was a small humanoid creature, staring at us from one of the branches. It looked like a little man made of sticks : its skin was bark-like and its eyes were brown. It was really hard to spot it among the branches, and my brother only saw it because it moved. It was about six inches high, which is an normal size for Bowtruckles, since they can be up to eight inches high.

Bowtruckles are categorized as Beast with a XX classification by the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. They are usually pacific creatures but can attack if the tree they live in is threaten (that is probably why they are called Tree Guardians). They have long sharp fingers that they use to scratch people, aiming for the eyes. For unknown reasons, magic is useless on them. In case they become aggressive, hey must be distracted with food, like woodlice and fairy eggs, which are the main parts of their diet. 

Fortunately, my brother had followed the safety instructions that the supervisors were handing out on the entrance of the reserve. He had bought a small bag of woodlice that was sold there in case of encounters with Bowtruckles. He took some woodlices form the bag and put them on a pile on the floor before walking slowly away from the tree. As soon as we were at a reasonnable distance from its tree, the Bowtruckle came down and ate some of the woodlices.

The Bowtruckle was never really aggressive to us, but we felt it was safer to show that we didn't want to hurt its tree, and to give it a gift.