I’ve started the process of designing my dream house and what does it need? It needs a moat filled with dangerous creatures to keep out the rabble. That’s just obvious! But what kind of animal? Crocodiles and alligators are obvious choices but that’s kind of cliché. It’s workable but not my first choice. My memory is fuzzy on this but I remember hearing about a castle somewhere in eastern Europe that has well fed bears as a moat dwelling security feature/tourist attraction. Again, workable but not ideal. Too fuzzy, cute and interesting to watch. They would attract too much attention.
My choice for moat dwelling security creatures, hippopotamus. Yes, they’re big, need a huge amount of space and a staggering amount of fresh water. They’re hungry (hungry, hungry hippos) so feeding the herd would be a massive, relentless, expensive task. “Herd” you say? Yes hippos are herd animals so to keep them happy, healthy and to keep a stable breeding pool, I’m going to need at least a couple dozen of them. This is a massive investment in land and resources to keep people from coming over the wall into my keep. I’m also not sure how they would adapt to a Nebraska winter.
On the plus side though, hippos have distinct advantages as moat dwellers. Aggressive and territorial, they are more than willing to stomp intruders into a fine paste. They’re physically imposing so very few people are going to think that they can just shout at them, slap them on the rump and move past them. Wild populations are also not hugely threatened. We can get hippos without damaging wild stock. This matters – have you priced lions lately?
So what do you think? What animals do you keep in your moats? What my best choice for a moat dwelling creature?
I kicked around the idea of using Portuguese man-o-wars as a deterrent but decided they weren’t visual enough. I want people to get on top of the outer wall, look down into the moat and the primary defensive wall beyond that, think “NOPE!” and just turn around.
I think lots of tiny creatures are a better deterrent that a few larger ones. Provided of course that people know about them. What you need to do is hire a bard to go about the land visiting pubs and telling tales of them.
I’ve heard it said that pirahna are not actually all that interested in taking down live prey. That they prefer a corpse. So good disposal, and good PR but low scores on active defense.
The Goliath Tiger fish (often mistakenly called a pirahna) is a solid freshwater choice. They are ugly, mean, hungry, unafraid of large prey and can get quite big. You’d have to heat the moat, but then that’s true across the board. Even if you pick something that survives in the cold, walking over the ice will defeat it easily.
Snakeheadsare fearsome creatures, survive the cold and can get up to three feet long. They have the added benefit of being delicious, so useful to have a mess of them in case of siege. But your local game warden will have a meltdown if you try to import them. They are such good predators that they tend to take over any environment they are introduced to.
But for inducing pure terror in the hearts of enemies, nothing can beat the tiny candiru. (That’s the one with backwards barbs who like to swim up a penis.) Send your bard around with a few stories and no man will enter your castle for love or money. And no worries from the game warden as it’s unable to survive a winter outside your heated pool.
This is not quite as original as you might think. Drug lord Pablo Escobar brought hippos to his vast ranch in Colombia, where, as this article notes, they are doing well - perhaps too well.
It’s fair to note that these hippos were brought in as curiosities, not guard animals. Indeed, as the article notes, they may not be particularly good in that role. They are rather inconsistent in their hostility to intruders. And to the uninitiated, they tend to seem “cuddly” rather than formidable.
Crocodiles - especially the salt-water variety - have none of these shortcomings. Except when digesting a recent large meal, they are quite consistently hostile to anything that might be edible. And very few would-be intruders are likely to see them as cuddly.
My only problem with wild boars is that within days they would be shot, hauled over the outer wall and barbecued. Granted you could do the same thing with a hippo but it’s a much bigger challenge when the animal meal-to-be weighs over a 1,000 kilo.
Yeah but how many of these creatures can kill a person outright in the time it would take them to reach the inner wall? Besides aren’t the effects of candiru shockingly overstated? Oh well, the bard can test it out - or he can do as you suggest in your first paragraph.
They wouldn’t be very happy in water, but how about some cassowaries?
Sure, they’re birds, but they used to be dinosaurs and they know it. Not far off human height, and unnervingly aggressive.
Double up them on on a outer ring of the land, with something small and deadly in the water, so any sneaky rabble who get past the cassowaries they saw just get got by the tiny jellyfish they didn’t see.
Yeah, the candiru are mostly a PR gig. Although, truly, you only have to get one soldier to stop the others coming.
Now you’re talking! I shuddered just reading this.
I strongly advise against any salt water species. A salt water tank that big and open to the weather will be hard to keep in balance. And really, you want the freshwater resevoir - again, in case of siege.
What about just planting the space with blackberry bushes? Ever tried to walk through those?
That’s certainly viable. Maybe I’m thinking of this in the wrong way. Move away from actively dangerous defensive creatures and just focus on setting up an effective alert. I can feed 500 chihuahua for the price of one hippo and nobody is getting over that wall quietly. Og help me if somebody rings the doorbell though.
