Salt Blight

Salt Blights are gelatinous ooze like creatures roughly the size of a small dog. They  are typically found in or near "ghost" forests. These creatures feed of plant life via osmosis, sucking the water and sugar out of them and leaving behind only the saline solution it used for the exchange. This feeding often results in ghost forests, forests composed of trees killed by these saline creatures. Salt Blights rarely attack larger animals unless provoked starving. However they are opportunistic and will feed on creatures unable to flee. Salt Blights that have not fed for a long enough period of time begin to form large sharp salt crystals as it's body shrinks. As it gets hungrier and more dehydrated these spikes prove useful in defending itself as a starving salt blight becomes more aggress and willing to take greater risks in its attempts to feed.
Salt Blights instinctively avoid large bodies of water or fast moving streams as both of these natural occurrences will rapidly cause the salt blight to deteriorate as such environments will dissolve the creature. For similar reasons salt blights also try to avoid prolonged exposure to rain hiding in hollow logs, abandoned burrows, rocky overhangs ect. Salt Blights are also adversely affected by dry areas and areas with high salt content as such areas cause them to dehydrate and starve. It is for these reasons that salt blights are solitary wandering creatures as they can not survive in the ghost forests they create. Thankfully these creatures are uncommon and slow moving making them easy to contain or avoid.
Some creature such as particularly bold deer or cattle have been know to use salt blights as mobile salt licks, though this behavior can be dangerous. Once a salt blight grows large enough it reproduces by splitting into two identical specimens that then wander away from each other. 
Over all these creatures are considered a wandering if dangerous nuisance that leaves an easily identifiable trail of damage in its wake that is hostile to its own survival.