Mythical Creatures

   Vampires! 
   Okay, what was your first thought when you read that word?  Twilight?  Dracula?  Van Helsing?  Blood sucking bats?  Until recently I would have said Twilight, even though I have neither read nor seen any part of the series.  Then I read Dracula, so now I think of him when I hear “vampires”.  It was a good book at the beginning.  Pretty slow, but fairly interesting.  But the whole ending battle that Van Helsing waged against Dracula was lame.  Dracula wasn’t even in it.  I was like, “dude! I wanted a cool fight where the super vampire whoops up on everyone then gets shot in the head with a silver bullet and BURNED!”  No such luck.  So that greatly diminished my appreciation for the book.  Now I want to watch Van Helsing and see some real vampire slaying.  Besides, I like Hugh Jackman. 
   Moving on to a more favored mystical creature, let’s talk about dragons.  Who doesn’t love a good dragon?  Dragons are awesome.  They fly along and rain down death and destruction from above.  Of course, sometimes they’re nice, wisecracking beasties, but not usually.  Most of the time they’re either wise and aloof, or evil and greedy.  But dragons have been made pretty much every way possible.  Except stupid.  I have never heard of a dumb dragon.  They’re always smart.  Whether they’re good or bad, they’ve always got brains.  When they’re bad, though, they generally get mad or something, giving the good guys the opportunity to kill them.  When they’re good, the bad guys always seem to have some sort of weapon that is deadly to dragons.  But when the dragons are bad, the good guys don’t get those handy dandy items.  Odd how that works out, huh?  I haven’t read a whole lot of dragon lore, so I may be a bit off, but oh well.  This is all balderdash anyhow.  A bevy of it.
   So let’s discuss unicorns!  Those shiny white beasties that look just like horses, but they get a horn and mystical powers for no apparent reason.  Who came up with them anyway?  I can imagine his or her thought process now. “Hhhmmm, I need some cool, mystical creature.  I like horses.  So what say I put a horn on a beautiful horse, give it magical powers, and call it a unicorn!  Genius!”  Uh, no.  My apologies if you who are reading like unicorns.  I’m not really trying to degrade them, they just seem unimaginative and lame when I think about it.  Yet they are one of the best known legends.  Maybe because people can envision them so easily.  There’s no real description needed.  Just say the word unicorn and people think “horse with horn”.  Saves a lot of bother when making up those mystical creatures for your fantasy story. 
   Now I want to forget unicorns.  Therefore, I shall move on to Bigfoot.  Most people will tell you Bigfoot is a myth.  Some people, though, will tell you he’s real.  As is the case with pretty much any mythical creature out there.  However, with Bigfoot, the minority might just be right.  I mean, did you see that footprint?  I did.  It was huge.  Massively large.  Like six feet long.  You know what I think he does?  I think he practices standing stock still so when he needs to, he can disguise himself as a tree.  He’s so tall he just has to stay in the forests and when hikers or whatnot go by, he simply stands still and they walk on by.  So, when you’re walking in a forest, watch out for those big trees.  Especially two big trees standing close together and kinda leaning toward each other.  But if you do see something, don’t let on.  Who knows what Bigfoot might do if anyone saw him.