Lords of the Winds
BY ALPER ÖZKAN (MSN/PhD I)
I write this column in the company of two magpies ravens, named Huginn and Muninn, whose trust I have earned over the past few months by continuous offerings of biscuits and bread. (I intend to eventually have them stand on my shoulders and act as my spies in the mortal realm. This is part of my master plan, other aspects of which include impaling myself on a tree for nine days to gain knowledge of magical runes, trading one of my eyes for a drink from Mimir's well and commissioning dwarfs to craft a spear that never misses its target for me to wield. Finding an eight-legged horse to ride is proving rather difficult, though.) Therefore, this column will be dedicated to the pair, and this week's topic will be legendary birds -- there are a whole lot of them, though, so I'll merely mention a few curious ones instead of attempting to present a more comprehensive list, which is far beyond my grasp.
First in line is Zhen, a mythical Chinese bird said to have had feathers dripping with poison potent enough to slay a man on the spot -- the mere touch of its wings was fatal. Zhen birds obtained this poison by consuming vipers, whose venom they preserved and incorporated into their own bodies. Despite its presence in legend, this is also a trait genuinely found in many poisonous animals, most notably poison dart frogs (which, when reared in captivity, are significantly less toxic than their counterparts in the wild, since the captive-bred frogs can't derive the necessary toxins from their diets). Zhen poison, or Zhendu, could be obtained by dipping the feathers of the bird in alcohol and was used as a means of assassination. So famous was this method that it later became synonymous with any sort of poisoning. Further, along the same lines as a certain less-than-pleasant ability attributed to the Tarrasque, the Zhen bird's excrement was caustic enough to dissolve stone. If you ever go to China, watch out for bird droppings.
Zhen birds were long thought to be creatures of legend, since no known bird could produce toxins of any notable potency. However, the discovery of a number of pitohui species with poison-coated feathers (probably derived from the insects they eat, much in the same way as poison dart frogs obtain their toxicity) has led to doubts on this matter, and speculation as to whether the Zhen perhaps did exist after all.
Norse mythology also features a number of important avians -- the eagle on top of the world-tree Yggdrasil is probably the most famous. This eagle, whose name is not known to us, had a bitter rivalry with the serpent Nidhogg, who gnawed at the roots of the tree, and both sides used the squirrel Ratatoskr as a messenger to carry insults between them. Ratatoskr, for his part, amused himself by exaggerating the messages and further agitating the serpent and the eagle -- I'd think it unwise to goad the two biggest predators of rodents when you're a squirrel, but Ratatoskr was apparently a master of his craft and neither side considered ending the quarrel by eating the messenger. Perhaps Nidhogg and the eagle actually enjoyed trading insults, since they didn't have much else to do. Various other birds were identified with the unnamed eagle, such as Vidofnir, the dawn-rooster on top of Mimameidr, or Hraesvelgr, a storm-causing giant that took the form of an eagle. (As you can see, Norse mythology has quite a number of names created for the sole purpose of being hard to pronounce. At least they have no equivalent to the likes of Chalchihuihtotolin and Dhrtarastra.)
Speaking of Dhrtarastra (the Buddhist guardian of the east, more commonly known as Jikoku-ten), it's worth mentioning that Hindu myths also prominently feature birds, often as the mortal enemies of serpents. Garuda, the famed king of birds and chosen vehicle of Vishnu, is particularly famous for his hatred of serpents, and his visage is carved on talismans to prevent snakebites.