Saturday evening started very pleasantly. Benny and I watched the whole season 1 of Mythbusters, the excellent Discovery channel show, Benny had recorded all the episodes on his DVR. We had a good time eating hot dogs that we cooked on his coffee table with an ingenious contraption made from two forks, tape, a piece of wood and some electrical wires. You simply put a hot dog between the forks and plugged it in...They cooked in seconds and were delicious.
No monster activity was noticed during the early hours of the evening but we planted some solid pieces of hot dog between the pillows as lure. We tied strings to the hot dog pieces that were connected to a bell and put ourselves under a crude tent we fashioned out of an old sheet and some chairs. There was room to lie down and we made ourselves comfortable with some pillows. Benny was snoring loudly in a few minutes but I put on my night vision goggles and kept watch on the couch. However my batteries ran out after a while and when I woke up the next morning the hot dogs and the bell was gone!
I took that as solid proof of monster activity and we discussed opening up Benny´s couch to see if anything was nesting inside but we decided against it because if nothing was there, we´d certainly let whatever was in the house know that we were on to it, and thus probably scare it off and never see it.
On Sunday night we watched season 2, also excellent, and at the end of the evening we put more hot dog pieces in the couch but this time we just put them on top of the seat cushions, very visible. We hid in out "tent" again and Benny was asleep almost immediately but I was able to stay awake much longer this night, I had fresh batteries in my goggles and i had tied the strings from the hot dog pieces to my toes so this time I would definitely notice any activity.
Around 3 am I felt a vigorous tug in my middle toe! I focused in on the couch and saw a fascinating creature slowly emerge from between the cushions. The monster was about a foot wide and approx. 2 feet long and was triangular in shape. it had long skinny arms and four very short stocky legs.
It was very cautious and stopped and almost retreated slightly every time Benny snored, but it got to all the hot dog pieces we had put out, the last string, by the way, really hurt as it was pulled of my big toe, I watched it through my goggles for a good 2-3 minutes before it disappeared into the couch again. I heard some loud crunching afterwards and then all was quiet.
It was a Couch Cruncher, no doubt about that, I was able to draw a pretty detailed field study of it.
The ext morning we decided to open up the couch. We put on sturdy work-gloves and started ripping the couch apart. But before we even got in to the interior there was some rustling behind the sofa and we were barely able to discern the little triangular beast scurry away...It was so amazingly quick on it´s stocky little legs, it was basically just a blur.
Since we had already ripped the lining of the couch we decided, although Benny was complaining the whole time, to open it up and have a thorough look inside.
We found a baby cruncher!
There was an area in the couch that was clearly the nest, papers and strips of fabric had been tucked together in a way similar to a birds nest and an the middle of the nest was a very small cruncher!
We were only able to watch it for a few seconds before it jumped! with those short legs who would have thought...but it jumped very long and high and then scurried away in the same direction the grown cruncher had gone. We tried to find tracks or any signs of where they might have gone but there were none.
I assumed they found a way out of Benny´s place and another couch somewhere.
I believe I am the first monstrologist to document the Couch Cruncher but I will study it further to see if there are any historical references to the species.
I will keep you updated.
My field notes:
