"Basilisk" by Daniel D. Copeland (the Naked Celt)

Well, just occasionally, the factual basis for a myth is the part that seems the most unbelievable. It doesn’t happen very often, but sometimes a female bird nearing the end of her life will grow male features. s/He may lay one or two final eggs in the process, but these will be small, infertile, and have no discernible yolk or white. Some observers have reported finding a fibrous structure, like a tiny serpent, inside such eggs. I won’t go into the anatomical details of how a rooster lays an egg; suffice to say, it’s much easier than it would be for a man to have a baby.

Mediaeval Europe was not friendly to those who stepped outside the bounds of their God-given gender. They believed such behaviour was satanic and would unleash terrible evil on the world. The basilisk myth expresses the conservative fear of gay, lesbian and transgendered people.

This particular basilisk is mostly a snake, but the front end is based on a small dinosaur called Oviraptor philoceratops... rather inaccurately, since it’s almost certain that Oviraptor had feathers, not scales, and it didn’t have a rooster’s comb or a snake’s forked tongue either, but it did have a beak with little fangs inside, and that was good enough for me. Incidentally, I’m never, ever again going to draw every single scale on a creature. I must learn how to suggest texture without actually filling in every detail. Pencil drawing, enhanced in PhotoStudio2000.