The Flower Hounds - Leigh Brackett

"SOURCE: "The Vanishing Venusians" by Leigh Brackett (Planet Stories, Spring 1944)

DESCRIPTION: "...They were not very large, the largest about the size of a twelve-year-old child. Their bodies were anthropoid but adapted top swimming with shimmering webs. They glowed with a golden light, phosphorescent like the lichens, and their eyes were lidless and black like one huge spreading pupil. Their faces were incredible. Harker could remember, faintly, the golden dandelions that grew on the lawn in summer. The heads and faces of the swimmers were like that, covered with streaming petals that seemed to have independent movements, as though they were sensory organs as well as decorations..." ("The Vanishing Venusians" by Leigh Brackett)

NOTES: The flower hounds resemble a cross between a walrus and a sunflower. They have sharp claws on their flippers and are carnivorous, even cannibalistic. When first encountered they are thought to be small (as quoted above) but these are only infants. The adults are three times larger than a man. These creatures once lived above ground but were trapped in a subterranean cavern with a lake by the Flower People. During this time their skin became white and unable to withstand bright sunlight. The flower hounds are plannies, plant animals.

HISTORY: These creatures are quite unique to Leigh Brackett."

http://web.archive.org/web/20070212052641/http://www.gwthomas.org/flowerhounds.htm