V: The Series quicksand scene

[Weapon X]

I've got the entire series on DVD. That gentleman isn't necessarily sinking, but being dragged down and eaten by an alien sand-dwelling creature called a "crivit", brought to Earth courtesy of the reptilian Visitors.

[SmileyMcDeath]

In at least one of the official novels, crivits feature prominently. Crivits are apparently a kind of sand-burrowing, intelligent, predatory, highly aggressive pack-hunting reptile, very distantly related to the Visitors themselves, in the same way dogs and wolves are very distantly related to humans. They often use them as attack-animals around sensitive facilities and prison-camps. Being completely blind, they hunt by scent, hearing and vibration. They travel quickly through sand, but don't do well in heavier soils or clay. Given their lifestyle, they're almost always ravenously hungry, since digging through sand and earth is so energy-intensive.

Spoilers follow:

The Crivit Experiment centers around a Visitor biologist who plans to release crivits into the wild as one phase of an experiment to naturalize Visitor wildlife on Earth. Near the beginning of the story, one of the characters tells a friend how he observed a deer being rapidly pulled down into the sand of the pine barrens near his farm--the friend speculates that the deer was swallowed up by quicksand, but the one telling the story rules it out. Quicksand doesn't work that way, for one, and for another, when he examined the area, the sand, though disturbed, was bone-dry. Later, he takes a sickly goat to the same general area, stakes it to a tree, and sees the same thing happen.

As the story unfolds, it turns out that the crivits, while dangerous, really aren't the true threat. The Visitors plan to release one of their primary food animals, a rodent-analog called a verlog, into the wild, and the crivits were one of their few natural predators back on the Homeworld. It is their intent that the crivits will keep the verlog population in check. Unfortunately, the crivits don't do well in the wild here on Earth, and verlogs are adaptable, able to eat nearly anything organic, grow to reproductive maturity in a matter of weeks, and have truly massive litters. Once released into the wild, they would essentially eat the countryside down to the ground in a few years, potentially turning the continent into a desert. At the climax of the novel, the Visitor scientist and the soldiers at his command are dragged underground during the final battle and killed by starving feral crivits.

For those of you who like your sand-burial served with a side of burrowing, tentacular monstrosities, it may be appealing. Also, it was a something of a decent read in and of itself:

http://v.popapostle.com/html/episodes/V80/The-Crivit-Experiment.htm

On Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Crivit-Experimen ... 0523424663

Edit: Another of the novels, V: Death Tide, actually features a brief sinking scene at the La Brea tar pits, around page 126. Grant you, it's Visitor soldiers, but still.

http://v.popapostle.com/html/episodes/V ... h-Tide.htm