Hump Backed Arctic Snake Dog Worshippers Arrested

A group of Hump Backed Arctic Snake Dog Worshippers were arrested in suburban Oslo yesterday after naked chanting, ritual sacrifice of both dogs and snakes, and a huge nearly out of control bonfire alarmed neighbors into phoning the police. The five Oslo teens, whose names were withheld, were arrested at 2:47 am as they danced naked around a raging bonfire made out of cardboard boxes, discarded Ikea furniture, and non-recyclable trash taken from suburban trash bins. The bonfire also included several mail boxes, a bird house, and the beginnings of a Christmas manger exhibit that was under construction in front of the local Christian community center. Neighbors were outraged.

"I don't know who these bloody pagan animal worshippers are, but I want them locked up and I want the key thrown away!", shouted local neighbor Sven Hortquist.

"The whole freakin' neighborhood smells like pampers and smoked meatballs. And seriously? Snake Dog worshipping? That went out with, like, Eric the Red," added 16 year old Gretchen Soorsgaard.

"Fortunately," an outraged Reverend Olaf Oostergard said with relief, "the sculpture of the baby Jesus was still in the basement of the Christian community center undergoing final touch-up. We bought the wrong color paint and his skin came out an odd emerald green color after the first coat. Otherwise our graven image of the baby lord would have burned to a crisp during that heinous, blasphemous, ritualistic, anarchistic, pagan pseudo-orgy. I know I shouldn't say this, being a religious leader and all, but I hope they rot in snake dog hell, wherever that is."

Coming on the heels of religious protests during the recent Hump Backed Arctic Snake Dog Day, both ecologists, politicians, and religious leaders now worry that this recent event might lead to a Snake Dog backlash and violence. A number of national parks and ecological preserves have gone to red alert in expectation that angry Norwegianers might vent their outrage on this innocent, noble beast, which is still considered an endangered species. Security has also been significantly ramped up around the Church of the Hump Backed Arctic Snake Dog in Stockholm, Sweden - the only organized religion that still worships the Snake Dog as the avatar of a god.

Hump Backed Arctic Snake Dog Day

Today is Hump Backed Arctic Snake Dog Day in the Scandinavian countries of Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The savage, mythic creature, once worshipped by the likes or Eric the Red, has been on the endangered species list since the 1980's. It lives primarily in protected coastal areas along the northern coast of all three countries, although predominantly on the Atlantic coast of Norway. There are tons of Snake Dog related activities today, including a "Zombie Hump Backed Pub Crawl" through the Oslo arts district, protests in front of government offices, Snake Dog related exhibits at a number of Museums, and a Snake Dog Walkathon to raise money for habitat restoration. Theatres across Norway will also be supporting the day through staged readings of Ibsen's play, The Wild Hump of Peer Silver, which uses the Snake Dog as a symbol for unrequited love, that will featuring a rotating panel of celebrities. If you happen to find yourself in Scandinavia, check it out.

In honor of this noble creature, once worshipped as a God, I have penned a haiku:

Neither dog nor snake
The Arctic Hump Backed Snake Dog
Oostervoort goovort!

The Hump Backed Arctic Snake Dog

Ironically, the Hump Backed Arctic Snake Dog is neither a dog nor a snake. It is in actuality the second largest rodent in the world, coming in a close second to the Brazilian Capibara, and it lives among the ice floes in the Arctic circle regions of Sweden and Norway.

Early Vikings called it "0ostervoort goovort", or Holy Rat, and they worshiped it as a God and built shrines in its honor. With the coming of Christianity, however, Snake Dog worship was banned, and its followers were burned at the stake and, when no wood was to be found, drowned in the fjords with giant stone crosses tied around their necks. Erik the Red, later discoverer of Greenland, was an avid Snake Dog worshipper; he fled to Iceland when neighbors found a Snake Dog shrine in a secret basement room of his stone house. In The Sage of Erik the Red, the entire Snake Dog Worshiper pogrom is dismissed in typical Nordic understatement as "some killings."

The highly aggressive Hump Backed Arctic Snake Dog, which frequently attacks humans, is notable for its distinctive tentacles, each of which has a paralyzing stinger at its end. The tentacles also have suction cups that the rodent uses to grip its prey. The tentacles must be kept damp, so Snake Dogs tend to live very close to bodies of water, although they can and sometimes do wander inland. A flat tail resembling that of a beaver allows the Snake Dog to dam up small streams to create pools of water where the creatures frolic and mate. Unlike a camel's hump, which is used for the storage of water, the hump of the Hump Backed Arctic Snake Dog actually holds the creature's brain.

Today, because of civilization and over-hunting, the Hump Backed Arctic Snake Dog is virtually extinct. The creatures aggressive nature often forced humans to destroy them out of self-defense, while a late-20th century Chinese belief in the Snake Dog brain as an aphrodisiac led to overhunting - a famous National Geographic photo from 1999 shows the carcasses of hump-less snake dogs littering the permafrost of Spitsbergen. Today they're protected by the Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish governments and linger on in selected nature preserves.

As one might expect from such a noble and savage creature with such a rich history, the Hump Backed Arctic Snake Dog appears in numerous works of music and literature. Beowulf prays to the Holy Rat before going off in search of Grendel. Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg's early symphony was inspired by the life and death of a Snake Dog worshipper - he abandoned it because of protests from religious groups. Henrik Ibsen used the Snake Dog as a metaphor for unrequited love in his play The Wild Hump of Peer Silver. And of course Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream was notoriously inspired by the painter's unexpected late-night sighting of a Snake Dog on a lonely road crossing a frozen stream on a dark winter night.