The Travels of Axel Pendogget, Science Ranger

(Click the image for a larger view.)
 
Cornwall is a land of mystery and intrigue, big cats, sea beasties, weresheep, pasty spiders and giants…and cow eggs, those strange round black objects that appear mysteriously around the countryside at the end of the summer.

The Science Rangers are a select band of highly trained Fortean reasearchers and crypto-zoologists who brave the wilds of the Cornish moors and beaches, documenting these bizarre and often dangerous phenomena, keeping the countryside safe and quiet for the likes of you and I…

This image, as well as featuring Axel Pendogget, a true modern pioneer of the work of the rangers, also shows various aspects of Cornish fauna, including the pasty spider, described in the following extract.

Few reliable accounts of Cornish cryptozoology exist, but one of the less apocryphal is:
The Countrymans Guide to Moorland Fauna by Caractacus Shroom (1922 Blood Tor Press, Penzance).
"Pasty spiders:
These buggers are big. Rare but big. We’re talking boulder-sized big. Which is not an unfair analogy when one stops to consider that it is under boulders and rocks (big ones mind) that the pasty spider is want to lurk.
Named originally for their choice of diet, the pasty spider occupies a unique position in the Cornish food chain. The first reported encounters were in the deep shafts and addits of the county’s tin mines during the very early days of the Cornish tin trade. They could scuttle from dark side tunnels with enough speed and mass to bear a fully grown mature miner to the ground and make off with his crib-box. Many an unsuspecting worker at the tin-face lost his lunch, as well as the occassional eyeball and pit pony, to the pastix arachniae subterraneum.

With the decline of the tin industry over the 19th and 20th Centuries, the pasty spider is now increasingly rare. The few breeding pairs that are known to still exist now prey fairly exclusively upon lost ramblers, sheep and the occassional small dog.
The disused and largely unmapped shafts and addits of the county’s mining industry still provide its main abode and means of travel beneath the countryside, giving it access to the surface world and food sources in the remote moorland regions."

Poster & prints available over on Red Bubble.

The Call of Cthornwall

"Lady Elizabeth Eldritch, displaying one of her discoveries on Bodmin Moor during her 1885 parabiology field trip. This little critter was harvested from an albumen sack found dangling from roof beams in the old pitchblende mine by Brimstone Tor..."

Been having fun with my latest steampunked views of Westcountry life under the growing umbrella notion of the Call of Cthornwall, where I can give free range to the pasty spiders and grockle mites of the county, with the safety of history between me and them! Publishing as posters, prints and cards over on Red Bubble, there may well be airships, test tubes and frock coats aplenty in the coming months...

Albert Cropper: Monster Stopper!

During the late1800’s in Cthornwall, the ‘bug’ hunter Albert Cropper was a familiar figure tramping the byways and cliff paths of the county, peddling his services in much the same way as itinerant knife grinders or mole catchers of the time.

His father operated a night soil collection business in Redruth . As an offshoot to this already dangerous work, Albert became the family firm’s parabiologist, specialising after a couple of grim encounters on the early morning collection round involving a Devonian tape lizard and a couple of giant stool grubs.

Seeing the potential for travel and the occasional balloon ride out to the Scilly Isles, Albert went freelance in 1879 with the aid of a sponsorship deal from Sir Richard Trevithick , the famed Cthornish inventor, mining engineer and monster trap designer.

This particular image was made as part of the 1885 Eldritch Expedition to Bodmin Moor and its interior, to which Albert was co-opted by local magistrates as Lady Elizabeth’s native tracker. It shows Albert presenting a captive grockle mite after an emergency roadside extraction from a Belgian tourist who had visited the shire without first taking the right inoculations.

Poster and print available at Red Bubble.

More from the Corps:

Another salvaged item of steam-memorabilia from the bottom of Great Uncle Norton's airman's chest. Dredd Bubblejet was first engineer aboard the H.M.A.S Jethro Tull when she was siezed upon by a visiting RSA: Air Corps publicity detachment, as the pin up girl for the services recruitment drive.
Poster available soon over on Red Bubble

 

New items from the coal bunker:

In a steampunkish vein I've dug out some old memorabilia from my great uncle's days in the Steam Flying Corps, from out of his old airman's chest down in the cellar. After tidying and restoring I thought I'd release a few retro items as prints and t-shirts, etc. This is the first of several in the pipeline: recruitment poster for Her Majesty's Science Rangers: Flying Corps. It features Major Tennessee Orville Monkfish, commander of the H.M.A.S. Reckless Endeavour. My great-uncle apparently served as his cabin boy for several months on first joining the corps. There were rumours of a copy of this poster that my uncle got the old major to sign, but we think it probably ended up at the bottom of the budgie cage, along with a stack of old fliers for corrective galvanic corsets.
Available as prints, posters and tees over at Red Bubble.

New T-Shirt on Red Bubble

Latest tee design on Red Bubble features Major Tennessee Orville-Monkfish, of Her Majesty's Flying Science Rangers, inveterate privateer and airship pilot.

Sketchbook: Bigfoot Banners

Shop banner for Bigfoot Studio on Zazzle:

Shop banner for Bigfoot on Red Bubble: