The exploits of a certain shirtless, slightly wounded, knife-throwing, sword-waving hunter of werewolves and ‘chuds’ has sparked a lot of questions.

But the chief among them (at least for me) is ‘what’s a chud?’

A quick Google search directed me to a Wikipedia page describing a subset of Baltic Slavs dwelling in the southern parts of Finland and coastal Estonia.

In the year 1030, Prince Yaroslav the Wise of Kiev defeated the Chuds and began demanding (and receiving) regular tributes from them. Not much more is noted about the Chuds, except that they were regularly the victims of raids from their eastern, Russian-speaking neighbors.

Chuds were no doubt a hearty people, but not exactly on par with werewolves.

I enlisted my ‘Tweeps’ to help me learn of a more likely match for our blade-bedecked hunter.

“He was also hunting ‘chuds,'” I said via Twitter. “What is a ‘chud’? Anybody?”

All responses pointed to the truly terrifying Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller (or C.H.U.D. for short).

They have glowing eyes, sharp little piranha teeth and slimy, gnarled skin. They were created when toxic waste came into contact with homeless people. And they’re “not staying underground anymore,” as the tag-line for a motion picture about C.H.U.D.s states.

If you dare, click on the above movie trailer. Parental guidance is recommended.

So, with chuds, or C.H.U.D.s, now identified, another question arises: how did C.H.U.D.s come to roam Bainbridge Island?

Leave it to a well-informed, Twitter-ready City Hall-watcher to posit the likeliest possibility:

“I guess the Winslow sewer leak did some long-term damage after all.”