It warms my old heart that you all are interested in my cryptids. So interested, in fact, that you purchase them. I thank you.
While cryptids are purchased, others are discovered, so my laboratory is like an odd beach, the ebb and flow of the tides bringing and taking these creatures to and from my home.
The term Cryptids comes from the term Cryptozoology – from the Greek kryptos “hidden” + zoology. Literally, the study of hidden animals. Cryptids, then, are these hidden animals.
The coining of the term Cryptozoology is often attributed to the zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans, who in turn attributed the coining of the term to Ivan T. Sanderson, a Scottish explorer and adventurer. Often associated with the hunting of Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster, Cryptozoology has had its share of mockery, though many cryptozoologists study actual animals that are outside their natural habitats. (Did you know that the giant squid was formerly considered a cryptid?)
I admit to being an amateur cryptozoologist, though, really, I think of myself as an explorer of the world with a voracious appetite for information, both substantiated and un-. The creatures I welcome into my house I call cryptids merely because I can not find a more proper identifier for such a wide and varied group of…things.
I shall catalog the cryptids, then, who have been purchased. Not only as a record for posterity (or proof, as Bubo might mutter) but also to jog my memory should one reappear in the garden, or on the front porch, or in my boot.
