[Scott from the Left Coast]

I may have an idea about the legs (at about the level of a WAG), if you've ever seen trees growing out of nurse logs (we have multitudes of such here in our area), where the portions of the roots near to the trunk are above ground and usually wrapped around the nurse stump, you can conjure the idea of a many-legged creature (each long root a leg). Well, maybe if you're as warped as I you can, anyway.

It's the head and face that especially baffle my mind, and the total package always seems to meld into something like the Wizard of Oz example that was given earlier.

Someone asked about the Entwives earlier, and that was something that I wondered about as well. There seemed to be some emphasis on the Entwives in this chapter, to the point that in the back of your mind, from that part onward, you wondered if Tolkien would produce them somewhere in the story. Otherwise why bring them up in that way?

If he did bring them up later, I missed it totally. But I did wonder about the Old Forest (bordering the Shire), where there were animated trees (one that almost devoured one of the Hobbits). Tom Bombadil's region. There wasn't (to my memory) any reference that would make one think that those "animated" trees in the Old Forest were Entwives, but it did cross my mind that this was the only other place where we ran into trees (or tree-like creatures) that were animated.

[doubled]

IIRC, when the hobbits are discussing going into the Old Forest, Merry talks of tales of how the trees move and the path shifts. This is a lot like the hourons(sp) that come into our story soon.

[Sam Cree]

I don't know what a nurse log is, but come to think of it, this area has trees called Mangroves, that definitely have legs, many of them. Only, I think of the ents as being two legged.

I don't have trouble imagining the head and face, it's easy enough to see a face in a gnarled old oak or poplar, what with all those knots and lumps and things that they get.

I think maybe the entwives are definitely MIA.