Reed-eel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Reed-eel is a fictional animal derived from the Edge Chronicles, a series of books created by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell.
Reed-eels are long, green creatures with deepset orange eyes and multiple petal-shaped suckers for mouths. A burrowing predator, less than half of their bodies are always hidden underground; they poke the rest of their bodies above ground through small holes.
Groups of Reed-eels camouflage themselves amongst patches of tall Greatgrass, and when unwitting prey wade through the grass, they pounce with their venomous fangs, hidden inside their suckers. They are extremely fast, and when threatened they can retract into their holes almost instantly, only to reappear moments later. They are also very cunning and work well as a group; they can plait themselves together to block someone's way, and are flexible enough to bend down and trip up helpless feet. Once prey is encountered, the Reed-eels go into a feeding frenzy, madly swiping at anything that moves, but escape is relatively simple - the prey must simply make it out of the Greatgrass patch, and the eels will not follow.
A quote from "Midnight Over Sanctaphrax": Where the tall grass ought to have been, there was instead a great mass of green worm-like creatures protruding straight up from holes in the ground.