What is This #4?

An occasional series where we share for your amusement unique, curious, and/or fascinating things that we have encountered!

The following picture was taken on 02 September 2009 at Swan Lake in North-Central Washington State.

This frightening little creature is only about one centimeter long, has enormous pincers and looks like something out of a B-Grade science fiction movie. If we tell you where we found it, we're afraid that will give it away.

The answer will be included in the next What is This post.
We encourage you to submit your thoughts using the Comments link below.


Answer to What is This #3 (posted 08-23-2009):
We found this rather large, dog-like scat (coyote, or maybe wolf?) in the middle of the trail and picked out these unusual items from it. #3, the whitish item is a tooth – likely a molar of a cervid (elk, deer, moose), though we don't know for sure what kind. The bluish fingernail shaped things we can only guess at. They might be dew-claws from the same animal as the tooth. (Dew-claws are those extra toes high on the back of an animal's leg – your dogs have them, though they may have been removed as puppies). They might be the tips of hoofs from a young deer fawn or elk calf.