If you’ve read the About Me page, or been to the website, www.stickynotestories.com, you know that I work in a radiochemistry lab. We were just starting to receive samples from England this past fall when I came up with this week’s sticky note story, Phooka Tales. It’s about a girl who works in a radiochemistry lab, gets transferred to a lab in England/Scotland (not sure yet), and goes a bit crazy under all the stress. She starts seeing things that don’t exist: mythical creatures that are not common and so she doesn’t know immediately what they are and what is happening. It starts with a Brownie, and then a Manticore, and a Nixie, and then she makes friends with a Phooka, thus the title. All of these creatures came from Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You, which is part of the Spiderwick’s Chronicles, which my husband bought me for Christmas a few years back. The field guide is a cute little book full of mythological creatures that are both well-known and not so well-known. I chose a few of the less-known creatures for this story.
In today’s sticky, Holly Thompson has just been given Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You as a joke gift. As she’s flipping through it, however, she sees an animal that she has just recently had a bad night with. I thought it would be the Phooka at first, but now I’ve decided instead that it was the Manticore, because that is a much more frightening animal. She’s trying to convince one of her co-workers that this creature is what she saw, although a lab full of scientists is not likely to believe her.
And yes, I might have been having a rough time at work when I came up with this story. Perhaps I was going a little crazy myself.