SIZE: They are about twice as long as a grown-up, but remarkably light—because they can never get enough food— and often blow away in a strong wind. Some of them make friends with gutter otters and persuade the gutter otters to wear them as scarves when the cold winds blow. This way the goldfish avoid being blown away when the winter winds are howling.
UNUSUAL THINGS: They are very rational, but not very good at logic. If there is a dangerous goldfish in your room, and it is making too much noise, you only need to say ‘this statement is untrue’. If this does not make it go quiet, explain to it that if that statement is true, then it has to be untrue, but if it is untrue, then it is true. After about half an hour of silence, the dangerous goldfish will complain that its brain is hurting, and slither away.
IS A THREAT TO: Goldfish. It doesn’t hurt them, because it can’t. A dangerous goldfish just sits outside the bowl, glaring at the goldfish.
USES: When gutter otters wear them as scarves, it makes the gutter otters more visible to cyclists. Some scientists think that dangerous goldfish are the reason why there has never been a plague of wild goldfish in this country, which makes them very useful. Other scientists say the dangerous goldfish are useless, because there has never been a plague of wild goldfish in this country.
HATES: Bombats and pool sharks because both these monsters like to eat dangerous goldfish. They don’t like drums or rock music, which they think is music played by hitting pieces of flint with a stick.
LIKES: Mainly, they really like goldfish, but they are quite fond of samba bands if one will stay still long enough to be eaten.
This monster is immediately recognisable because of its golden colour and its four eyes, two at the front and one on a stalk, halfway down each side of the body. Dangerous goldfish like to hide under carpets until dark, when they come out and steal the strings from pianos and guitars. These strings are made of wire, and the dangerous goldfish always hope that one day they will learn how to knit suits of chain mail. As they have no hands, this is unlikely ever to happen, but if your piano goes quiet, it may indicate that there are dangerous goldfish around.
Then again, it might just mean that a moby duck could be nesting in the piano, usually sitting between the keys and the strings.
Pool sharks are really useful if you have a swimming pool that is infested with dangerous goldfish, or if you belong to a slow-moving samba band. The dangerous goldfish may be recognised by their size and their eyes. Dangerous goldfish don’t last long in swimming pools, so pool sharks are very, very hungry, because they only eat dangerous goldfish.
Even though a pool shark is about as big as your foot, it will usually eat two dangerous goldfish in a single sitting, if it gets the chance. As they have trouble finding seats in most swimming pools, this does not happen very often. In big storms, when dangerous goldfish may blow in, people often put poolside chairs in the pool, just for the pool sharks.
Pool sharks are good at mathematics, and one of them came up with the famous Goldfish Conjecture, which says that if you eat two prime goldfish, that could even be called a meal, while four prime goldfish make a square meal.
Because they get so hungry, pool sharks will sometimes invade houses, but there is no need to worry unless you are a dangerous goldfish. They will sometimes borrow one of your socks to wipe themselves with, but they will always hang it up to dry afterwards.
They are very good at juggling, and a few of them have been known to juggle as many as eight billiard balls at a time. The trouble is that they have no pockets to carry the juggling balls around in, so they need to go to places where they can find lots of balls, just waiting to be juggled. As a species, they know that golfers get upset if their golf balls are stolen; this is why they now prefer billiard balls.
There is a legend about two pool sharks, Slow Eddy and Flat Harry, who used to juggle cannonballs, but nobody knows if the story is true, and it’s a while since anybody saw them.
ORIGINS: Scientists think they evolved from the puddle shark of the desert regions of the USA, though nobody knows how they got to the rest of the world, as tests have shown that puddle sharks are frightened of deep water. Maybe they waited for low tide.
SIZE: About as long as your foot. If your foot is longer, don’t worry, because they will never be tempted to bite a few bits off until the sizes match. When they see a foot that is larger, they swim away, worried that you will tread on them. Pool sharks are terribly nervous and friendly to anything larger than them (except dangerous goldfish).
UNUSUAL THINGS: They are midnight black all over, very streamlined, and their teeth appear to be made of gold.
IS A THREAT TO: Dangerous goldfish. You hardly ever see a human wearing Macleod tartan in a swimming pool, so maybe the pool sharks eat them as well when they try. The only way to find out would be to dive into a pool in a Macleod kilt, but are you feeling lucky?
USES: Clearing pools of dangerous goldfish, protecting slow samba bands. If you can get the attention of a pool shark, it will do sums for you. Regrettably, pool sharks are too large to use as replacements for calculator imps, but they were used in some of the primitive fluid logic computers in the 1960s. A few pool owners have pool sharks which have been trained to eat leaves and other rubbish that falls into pools.
HATES: Irrational numbers and rational food. Dangerous goldfish are very rational, but the pool sharks say that once they find themselves being eaten, the goldfish get very irrational, which makes them tastier. Pool sharks don’t like bombats very much, because bombats also eat dangerous goldfish. They don’t like equinoxes very much, because equinoxes step on things with their feet.
LIKES: People playing Marco Polo in a pool, because it attracts goldfish of all sizes, including dangerous goldfish.
This monster is best recognised by its colour and size, and especially by its golden teeth.
Many people will tell you that this bird is not a monster at all but those are people who have never had a St Bernard’s carrier pigeon land on their head. It will happen to them one of these days, and serve them right. The bird isn’t all that big, but it carries a big barrel full of brandy, and this makes it hard for the pigeon to fly straight.
The birds get off the ground with a JATO (jet-assisted take-off) unit attached to each leg. They take off when their trainer lights each of the units. They do a very funny cartwheel if only one of the units burns properly.
No bird the size of a large pigeon can stay in the air for long with a big barrel around its neck. The idea for it came when somebody noticed that the St Bernard’s dogs sometimes got stuck in the deep Swiss snow, which stopped them rescuing lost people. They thought that maybe homing pigeons could be used to carry refreshment to people who got thirsty out on the snowfields. Well, they say they thought it through, but nobody believes this, because the pigeons would just fly out for a bit, and then come home again.
The good news is that St Bernard’s carrier pigeons only fly or walk into houses when there is snow all over the floors. The bad news is that they have poor eyesight, so if there is a moby duck sleeping on your floor, the pigeons may mistake the duck for thick snow cover, and fly in looking for skiers to serve drinks to. If this happens, borrow a helmet from the nearest sinking goose and pick up a tennis racquet. This will not frighten the highly intelligent St Bernard’s carrier pigeon but, if it looks like people are getting ready to play tennis, it will make them realise there is no snow. The helmet will protect you if the pigeon accidentally bumps into you.
ORIGINS: The pigeons were first bred and trained by a group of specialists in remote linguini sensing, who were looking for a better way to locate linguini that was growing in steep-sided valleys in southern Switzerland. Later, they were fitted with cameras, and used as spies in wars. The whole drink-serving story was just a cover story for their real role in espionage, but nobody ever thought to tell the birds this, and those in the know were all killed in the collapse of the Dental Bridge at the mouth of the Oral River in 1989, when the Interna
tional Quarking Duck Bridge Marching Convention was held there.
SIZE: The size of a large pigeon, with big webbed feet which work like snowshoes.
UNUSUAL THINGS: A brilliant ability to seek out, locate and eat linguini.
IS A THREAT TO: Low-flying moby ducks, whom they mistake for clouds; invisigoth skiers, whom they often bowl over by accident, just like everybody else. Because they salivate at the very thought of linguini, flocks of these pigeons descend and can devour whole crops—causing damage to the world’s very few remaining legal linguini crops.
USES: Rogue linguini harvesters have been using these birds in much the way that others use pigs to find truffles. The pigeons’ barrels are replaced by a tracking device, and they are fitted with a muzzle, to stop them eating what they find.
HATES: They really hate it when one of the JATO units hangs fire or burns out early, as this sends them into a cartwheel flight. The skiers nearby hate it as well, but the more distant skiers—the ones who enjoy fireworks—cheer.
LIKES: Linguini.
These monsters may look like pigeons but they have goggles (with corrective lenses), crash helmets and they always have barrels around their necks. The JATO units which are strapped to their legs on take off are jettisoned as soon as they are finished with, so you are unlikely to see these.
This animal, like the numbat and the wombat (not classed as monsters), is a native of Australia, and only really counts as a monster in places where it is not a native. This means it is regarded as a monster in other parts of the world, where it has been introduced because it catches poisonous cane toads and kills them by dropping them from a great height before eating them.
In most cases, so long as you are not a cane toad, bombats are completely harmless. Of course if your head looks like sandstone, can be assumed to be basalt, or if it can be taken for granite, you may be at risk of suffering a nasty blow.
The big danger is that the bombats switched some years ago from hunting cane toads to chasing fish, or small horned monsters which they seem to regard as a special treat. Being hit on the head by a small horned monster can leave you deaf, and even being hit on the head by a small fish can leave you hard of herring.
Scientists think the bombats may not like troppos very much. A few of them have wondered if maybe bombats may just like the noise that it makes. Either way, every bombat who has ever been observed thinks that nothing is more amusing than dropping rocks on the steel top hats that troppos wear. The bombats have nine different words that they use to describe the noises made, and their favourite one is the pang. Even troppos feel the pangs, they say.
ORIGINS: They seem to have evolved from fishing bats, which kill fish by dropping rocks on them. Now they drop fish on the rocks instead, but they are otherwise similar to the fishing bats.
SIZE: The bombat’s body is about the size of a pigeon, the wingspan is almost 2 metres, giving them amazing lifting powers.
UNUSUAL THINGS: Because they are Australian, the bombat has a pouch in which to carry stones, pieces of string, pencil sharpeners, snacks and other useful items. Some hat makers in the Panama area have found a market selling woven belly-packs to fruitbats, who have begun copying the bombats, all across Eurasia. (Fruitbats drop fruit on rocks to split it, and this is why they are called fruitbats. Some of them specialise in dropping stone fruit.)
IS A THREAT TO: Fish, cane toads, people with geological hairstyles and small horned monsters. They also like to drop rocks on the top hats worn by troppos, just to hear the loud clanging noise it makes.
USES: An attempt was made, many years ago, to use bombats as intelligent carrier pigeons, but this failed when they insisted on wrapping the messages around pebbles and dropping them on people. There were some experiments with an almost-forgotten breed, the St Bernard’s bombats, but these bats kept dropping their barrels on people.
HATES: Puffer fish that inflate in the pouch. For no reason at all, bombats are terrified of hard-boiled eggs, and will stay well away from any house where these are eaten more than once a month. They also hate curried socks, so they are not usually seen anywhere near gobblesock infestations.
LIKES: Catching politicians in public and dropping jellyfish on their heads; eating dangerous goldfish and listening to loud rock music, or even just loud rocks.
This monster is recognised by the small body and large wings, a permanent leer, and the pouch, which faces backwards, so that things drop out when they stand on two legs.
The troppo looks more than anything like a monkey wearing a top hat and parrot feathers, which is not really all that surprising because it is, indeed, a sort of monkey that likes to glue parrot feathers all over it, and it also likes to wear a top hat.
There are just three problems with this description. The first is that troppos are very big and not very clever, so they usually forget to take the feathers off the parrot before they glue them on. This means that as they walk through the jungle, you can hear their feet booming along, and you can also hear the angry squawks of all of the parrots that are glued to the troppo’s fur.
The second problem is that a troppo’s head is also very large, so they have their top hats made from heavy steel plate. They get a group of rebel copywrong pirates to weld their hats for them, and this is the cause of the third problem: the leader of the copywrong pirates, Long John Sliver, has ordered all loyal copywrong pirates to destroy these top hats by throwing rocks, puddings and loose violas at the hats.
So as a troppo walks through the jungle, everybody hears the boom of its feet, the squawking of its parrots and the clang of things bouncing off the steel top hat. All of this is very upsetting to the troppo, because all a troppo wants to do is sneak up on a leopardchaun, because it looks like a banana, and eat it. (Bananas are smart enough to hide before the troppo sees them, and even leopardchauns can get away from the slow-moving and noisy troppos, if they hear the troppos coming.)
The only known artistic troppo is a composer called Manon. Most musicians have heard of Manon, but they usually hate the music. They say it sounds like lumps of concrete being dropped on an iron roof (or a steel top hat), and that any amount of it is too much. Many of them use ‘manon troppo’ as a code for ‘not too much’.
ORIGINS: When they were smaller, troppos used to be able to catch bananas and eat them, and because bananas were good for them, the troppos grew and grew. In the end, they grew so big that they could no longer run fast enough to catch bananas, and they stopped growing. After that, the mean bananas used to laugh at them, and the troppos started wearing top hats to look more dignified. The parrot feathers are just a fashion statement.
SIZE: BIG! That’s all you need to know.
UNUSUAL THINGS: The steel top hats are probably the main thing. The troppos got the idea from the equinoxes, and thought the hats looked good. Well, they sort of work on the equinoxes, but on the troppos, no, it’s not a good idea. Not with the parrot feathers.
IS A THREAT TO: Bananas, leopardchauns, parrots and anything small and crunchy that gets in the way of a troppo.
USES: Somebody once thought they might be useful for clearing jungle, but while you could get them started, it was hard to get them to stop. They worked on the famous Sahara Rainforest and that is why it is the Sahara Desert today. Troppos have been used as a form of biological control to get rid of large mobs of moby ducks. This is very noisy and extremely messy, which is why most civilised nations have banned the practice.
HATES: Troppos don’t notice anything much, so it is hard for them to hate anything at all. If they realised rocks were hitting their top hats, they might care, but with the noise of the parrots, the booming of their feet, the crashing of the trees that they knock over and the shrieks of terrified creatures running away, the troppos don’t hear a thing. They really hate stepping on moby ducks because they nearly always fall over.
LIKES: Bananas, things that look like bananas.
This monster is the largest thing in the jungle, but it is also very shy, so you
are unlikely ever to see one. If you do see one, and you happen to be wearing a banana costume, run!
Every modern home has at least one drain monster; some homes have several. Drain monsters are needed in our kitchens, where they sit beneath the plughole and drink all the water going down through the hole—this is what stops large puddles forming on your kitchen floor.
Most plumbers carry a range of drain monsters to fit into drains as replacements for drain monsters who have died or lost their power to prevent water escaping. One of the reasons sea levels are rising all around the world is that there are very few drain monsters left in the world’s oceans, where they usually keep the water levels down by drinking the seas.
There is one major puzzle about drain monsters: why did they lower the water levels by drinking lots of sea water? Mainly, say old sailors, because that meant more rocks close to the surface, more holes in ships, and so more places for drain monsters but that only makes sense if you know how the drain monsters got started.
ORIGINS: Drain monsters were once found only in Norway. They have since spread all around the world, because sailors used to keep a few of them on board ship in case a leak developed, and sometimes, a few would escape or be let go. In Old Norse, the language of the Vikings, the drain monster was called a fother when it was used to block the leak. You don’t hear this word much any more, but people who know about sailing will tell you that fothering is still the name given to plugging a hole in a ship. The tradition of using fothers to block holes began with a Viking called Holy Olaf or, more correctly, Holey Olaf, because he was always running into rocks with his longship. Olaf needed lots of fothers. Over the years, sailors learned to release the drain monsters when they got large enough to begin lowering the ocean levels around the boats. Whales ate most of the drain monsters that stayed in the sea, but some of them moved ashore, where they bred and became domesticated.
The Monster Maintenance Manual Page 3