Bone! Bone! Rowrf!
Hmm, well, Gandalf said that the Balrog was a thing of slime when his fire was put out. It had spent all those centuries in the deeps of the word sunk in that underground lake. The watcher and the Balrog had identical attitudes, both attacked the party. Was it too much of a coincidence that two large nasty creatures from earlier ages occupied the same mine?
Problem: the Balrog seems to have needed Pippin's stone to alert it, as the watcher it should already have known of their presence. Solution: the Balrog thought it had buried them in the stonefall at the entrance when it pulled down the trees with its Balrogian tentacles. Pippin's stone alerted it that the job was not done, therefore when the chamber of records collapsed, it knew the company would probably escape again and circled round to catch them.
So, where would a Balrog get tentacles and why wouldn't the company notice same at the bridge?
The Balrog's 'mane' could have been Medusoid (although we aren't told that those locks were of a size to drag Hobbits around, we aren't told they're NOT, and the Balrog was big). Thus, bad hair day: slimy tentacles. Good hair day: flaming mane. No, I don't really like the hair theory.
Possibly at the bridge, the Balrog in its excitement at the immanence of prey was whirling its shadowy shoulder-tentacles so incredibly swiftly they blurred into the ILLUSION of shadowy spreading wings much as a hummingbird's does? That's a nice picture.
Or, the Balrog's whip, in its slimed form, coated thickly with mud and lakeweed, might have been mistaken for tentacles by the over-excited party. That seems likeliest.
The one conclusive piece of evidence is that the Watcher and the Balrog are NEVER seen together in the same room. Not once. Very suggestive.
[ October 21, 2002: Message edited by: Nar ]
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