The Eternal Allure & Mystery of the “Tickle Tree”
One of the most iconic images in tickle fetishism is the semi-anthropomorphic plant that uses ambulatory vines (tipped with feathery leaves) to bind and tickle its helpless victims. Start digging through any large collection of tickle-toons and stories and you’ll uncover examples by the potload. Heck, even my own characters Lexi & Lydia have tangled with tickling vegetation, though as we see above it was purely their own fault. Or at least Lexi’s…
How do we account for the fascination of foot-tickling vegetation? I have a feeling there’s a deep kinship with the image of the “tentacle monster” with a similar ticklish agenda. THAT goes all the way back to old Japanese prints of frisky geisha-abusing octopi and thence to contemporary “hentai” anime porn. But I doubt it’s the whole story. I’d have to do some research, but I’m fairly sure images of tickle-plants outnumber images of tickling-by-tentacle in our fetish. And we’ve seen a number of tickling plants in mainstream cartoons - they featured in episodes of the 80s cartoons Pandamonium and Ewoks Adventures, and more recently in Cartoon Network’s Chowder. No question about it, those toons did a lot to (ha ha) “plant” the image in ticklers’ minds.
But just as you can ultimately trace the ten-tickle monsters back to the “floating world” prints of Old Tokyo, there’s a legend behind the tickle-plants that’s worth our attention as tickleologists. This is the “man-eating tree of Madagascar,” one of those bits of pop-pulp detritus that has swirled around in our collective unconscience for so long it evokes a vague twitch of recognition in most people, even as they draw a complete blank on anything beyond that. It sounds like something from a pulp magazine of the 30s–maybe Seabury Quinn on a bad day–but in fact, it’s much older. And the original story actually contains a sentence that’s very interesting…
The "Ya-Te-Veo" Plant from J.W. Bunuel's FROM LAND AND SEA...a Real-Life Tickle-Monster??
In 1881, someone claiming to be a German explorer named “Carl Lich” published an article in the South Australian Register that gave an account of a human sacrifice he had witnessed in the wilds of Madagascar. A young maiden of the “Mkodo Tribe” was fed to a strange, tentacled tree. The account of the ensuing “sacrifice” ranks with the very best bad writing the pulpsters ever committed to paper, but I want you to read this bit very carefully:
“”The slender delicate palpi, with the fury of starved serpents, quivered a moment over her head, then as if instinct with demoniac intelligence fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms; then while her awful screams and yet more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly strangled down again into a gurgling moan…”
Italics mine, needless to say. I’m sure the good Herr Lich meant “awful laughter” to be a sign that the girl’s terror had tipped her over the edge of madness, but you gotta wonder exactly what else those “slender delicate palpi” might have been getting up to. Maybe a few of them slipped between her slender, tender toes? Maybe the tip of one worked its way into her helpless, oh-so-deep navel, or vulnerable armpits? Were some of the vines tipped with feather-brush like bunches of frilled leaves that were scrubbed across her tummy and naked soles? Were her last moments moments not merely of terror but helpless, ticklish laughter?
True, by 1955, that old sourpuss Willy Ley had established in one of his (admittedly fascinating) books of popular science that there never was a Mkodo tribe, and “Carl Lich” was simply a pseudonym of some Victorian journalist of slightly sub-sterling integrity. In other words, the whole thing was a just a good (if lurid) story.
But as long as there are ticklers, good old Carl’s fantasy will still hold potent sway…so next time you’re cracking open a cold one, take a sec to raise it in his memory…along with maybe a couple sticks of Miracle Gro.
-Colin
According to Tickle-Artist Annoxanti, the Tickle-Tree Flourishes in the Philippines As Well!
