Squonk

The Squonk is a legendary creature reputed to live in the Hemlock forests of northern Pennsylvania. Legends of squonks probably originated in the late nineteenth century, at the height of Pennsylvania's importance in the timber industry.

The earliest known written account of squonks comes from a book by William T Cox called Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods, With a Few Desert and Mountain Beasts (1910). Mr. Cox's account is reprinted in Jorge Luis Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings (1969).

The legend holds that the creature's skin is ill-fitting, and covered with warts and other blemishes, and so it hides from plain sight and spends much of its time weeping. Hunters who have attempted to catch squonks have found that the creature is capable of evading capture by dissolving completely into a pool of tears and bubbles when cornered. A certain J.P. Wentling is supposed to have coaxed one into a bag, which while he was carrying it home, suddenly lightened. On inspection, he found that the bag contained only the liquid remains of the sad animal.

The "scientific name" of the squonk, Lacrimacorpus dissolvens, comes from Latin words meaning "tear", "body", and "dissolve".

Cultural references

Mario Bava's 1971 film, Twitch of the Death Nerve (aka Carnage), written by Bava, Giuseppe Zaccariello and Filippo Ottoni, features dialogue around the 10-minute mark describing the squonk and its attributes.
Steely Dan mentioned the creature in the song "Any Major Dude Will Tell You" on their 1974 LP Pretzel Logic with the lyric "Have you ever seen a squonk's tears? Well look at mine."
The third track on Genesis's 1976 album A Trick of the Tail is "Squonk". The song recounts the legend of the hunter who captured a squonk, as described above.
A 2002 short story by Glen David Gold entitled "The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened Thereafter" alludes to the myth and gives the name to the deceitful clown of the story, who cries "heedless crocodile tears."
Michael Chabon's novel Wonder Boys contains a references to "a certain question in "Any Major Dude""
Playwright Daniel Caffrey's play Gregor and the Squonk is loosely based on the tale of J.P. Wentling. Initially written for the short play festival at Florida State University, it was later mounted at Bailiwick Repertory Theatre in Fall 2008, by Tympanic Theatre Company

Scientific references

Squonks are also known in chemistry and biology. Some substances are stable in solution or some other "wild" form but cannot be isolated or captured without actually catalyzing their own polymerization or decomposition ("dissolving in their own tears"). For example, a molecule containing a carboxylic acid moiety and an acid labile moiety might be stable when initially prepared as the salt (e.g., barium prephenate) but unstable as the free acid (prephenic acid). Other examples can be found in: Toby J. Sommer, "Chemical Squonks", Chemical Innovation, 2000, 30 (April 2000), 24-32. ISSN 1527-4799. Chemical Abstracts: 133:73580 ; CAPlus: 2000:254494.