In Jerzy Kosinski's Steps, one of these completely consumes itself.  Radclyffe Hall's The Unlit Lamp was originally titled after one of these.  In "The Man Who Loved Islands," D.H. Lawrence compares the story's setting to one, and in a story by Italo Calvino one captured by Zefferino tries to kill Signorina de Magistris.  A political tract by Norman Mailer is named for "The Idol" and one, while a trained one is attacking Katje Borgesius when Tyrone Slothrop first encounters her in Gravity's Rainbow.  One is described as
In Jerzy Kosinski's Steps, one of these completely consumes itself.  Radclyffe Hall's The Unlit Lamp was originally titled after one of these.  In "The Man Who Loved Islands," D.H. Lawrence compares the story's setting to one, and in a story by Italo Calvino one captured by Zefferino tries to kill Signorina de Magistris.  A political tract by Norman Mailer is named for "The Idol" and one, while a trained one is attacking Katje Borgesius when Tyrone Slothrop first encounters her in Gravity's Rainbow.  One is described as being characterized by "relentless accuracy" and has its "claw cut by the avalanche/'with a sound like the crack of a rifle" in a poem which compares it to Mount Rainier by Marianne Moore.  The proprietor of Los Muertos Ranch, Magnus Derrick, is strangled by the railroad represented by, for 10 points, what title creature of a novel by Frank Norris?
In Jerzy Kosinski's Steps, one of these completely consumes itself.  
Octopus or Octopi