The Monster Maintenance Manual

by Peter Macinnis

  UNUSUAL THINGS: The shoelace monster is able to kill a full grown spaghetto with its famous death roll. As you now know, it mistakes shoelaces for spaghetti, causing them to tangle. No other monster makes this mistake.

  IS A THREAT TO: Earthworms, spaghetti and very small toothless snakes.

  USES: These are very useful monsters, as they eliminate earthworm plagues under your bed and also stop noisy spaghetti fights by eating the spaghetti.

  HATES: Goth ravens eat the darker varieties of shoelace monster, mistaking them for carbon worms. Because they are highly responsible, shoelace monsters will put themselves in your shoes, to replace your shoelaces if they eat a shoelace by accident. They like to be thanked, and they hate being tied in a triple bow. Before you tie your shoelace in a triple bow, look for teeth at each end of the lace, and if you see teeth, no triple bows! Shoelace monsters compete with drinking straw monsters in the hunt for spaghetti, but they seem to get along quite well.

  LIKES: There is no real need to attract shoelace monsters, as they will find their way to you if there is an earthworm infestation or a spaghetti plague. Shoelace monsters like to be made welcome, and will be more likely to stay if you put up some small ‘welcome’ signs.

  This monster is long and skinny, with lots of teeth at one end, not unlike the average domestic shoelace, except for the teeth, but it shows its teeth only when it smiles at you.

  You just don’t see live gargoyles around any more. All you can see is the occasional statue of one on old stone buildings. The statues wearing brightly coloured socks have friends and admirers who are visigoths famous for their interest in bright colours. The ones wearing one brightly coloured sock may have had a problem with gobblesocks.

  Real live gargoyles are probably still around, lurking in a few ruins, but the last gargoyle in captivity was a female called Spike, who suffered dreadful indigestion in 1947 when she ate a forgetful elephant which had been to a fancy dress party, dressed as an imp, and forgot to change its clothes. Spike died of forgetful elephantiasis.

  In the olden days when people built very tall cathedrals, there was no fire service in most cities, so all of the big buildings needed to keep tanks full of water at the top. This water could be used to put out fires, but imagine how hard it was, carrying buckets of water up 500 stairs! So gargoyles were given the job.

  Real gargoyles hate water, the statues of gargoyles don’t care if they are wet or dry. If you ever hear somebody say that things mix like oil and water, this is really a much older saying ‘like a gargoyle and water’. Gargoyles have long tongues and use them to catch flies and mosquitoes and the occasional imp when it makes mosquito noises. Gargoyles would be really good to have in the house, because of what they eat, but they like to perch high up, and if they are not extinct, they are very rare.

  Some scientists think the gargoyles got fed up with being used as pumps, and learned somehow to disguise themselves as stone statues, rather than the brightly coloured versions that are mentioned in the records from the Middle Ages. Other scientists think they just got smart and hired the invisigoths as colour consultants.

  If you want a gargoyle as a friend, they are sensitive about their appearance. Never tell them they are looking good, or bad. And if you mention the weather, never ever mention the chance that it might rain. Don’t mention the water!

  ORIGINS: Leonardo Fibonacci had the idea one day of getting tame gargoyles, and using them to suck water up to the rooftops of cathedrals. He did this by putting stone gargoyles on many of the pipes and leaving a few pipes free for the live ones, but the real gargoyles were too clever, and ran away, so the idea never worked. All the same, people kept on trying, and that is why Gothic buildings are covered in stone gargoyles, with their mouths over metal tubes.

  SIZE: About the size of a domestic cat.

  UNUSUAL THINGS: Very effective at sucking water up to great heights. Records from the Middle Ages list several varieties: yellow with red spots, black and white stripes, and the rare Imperial Purple gargoyle.

  IS A THREAT TO: Mosquitoes, fires, forgetful elephants in fancy dress.

  USES: Only as domestic pumps. This is probably why these lazy monsters hate water.

  HATES: They also hate being called gurgles. If you use this word once a day, all your domestic gargoyles will move out. In fact, even just having a gurgling drain monster in the house will make them want to move on, if that is what you prefer.

  LIKES: They love mosquitoes, so if you can breed mosquitoes, this may attract gargoyles to your house, but it may not, and you will probably end up with large numbers of ceiling slimers in your home instead. Gargoyles also eat imps, if the imps are foolish enough to make mosquito noises in a known gargoyle habitat. They enjoy cooking plants in pots.

  Note all the different varieties of gargoyle carved by medieval stonemasons. Gargoyles were used as working animals, being trained to run up and down the scaffolding, carrying tools, messages, and lunch for the stonemasons, so the masons had plenty of models to work from. The live gargoyles seen in the 19th century seem to have all gone back to the wild type.

  The dwarf underbed lion is just like an ordinary underbed lion, except that it can fit under a bed, while the ordinary underbed lion has real problems getting in there. In fact, the ordinary underbed lions have so much trouble getting under beds that they don’t bother trying to fit in, but they still use their old name.

  This is good, because the dwarf one is much more friendly than the full sized underbed lion, and it has better manners. The dwarf underbed lions are also monsters of great common sense, because they hate mime artists. When a dwarf underbed lion sees a mime artist performing, it sneaks up behind the mime and roars very loudly.

  If you hear roaring coming from under your bed, it is likely that the underbed bears have been encouraging mime artists to hang around, and the dwarf underbed lions have become annoyed. They won’t usually be very annoyed, but they will want to frighten the mime artists so the mimes will call out and run away. Mime artists aren’t supposed to call out. Most civilised people say that the mime artists are supposed to run away. Other civilised people say the lions should eat the mime artists. This then starts a fight between civilised people, which can get rather nasty.

  ORIGINS: The underbed lions are nothing to do with African lions. Some people think that the underbed lion may have been another Blenkinsop failure, an attempt to breed a sheepdog that would bite tax inspectors, because Count Henry Blenkinsop Junior was left with a lot of debts and no money. There is no proof of this, except that dwarf underbed lions never attack tax inspectors, which would be about right, given Count Henry Blenkinsop Junior’s record of success.

  SIZE: The largest ones are the size of a kitten, but their faces are much more friendly. They have very soft fur, but they never brush their teeth, so their breath smells bad. Some of the soft fur is on their teeth.

  UNUSUAL THINGS: There is nothing unusual about this monster, except perhaps that it quite likes to go to the opera. Many monsters do that, but only dwarf underbed lions like to sing along.

  IS A THREAT TO: Large monsters, which they like to eat cooked, preferably grilled on a barbecue. They are not very good at lighting or working the barbecue, so they often need help. Now, the way that dwarf underbed lions see it, sensible cows are just large enough to qualify as large monsters, but sensible cows are good cooks, and so they often save their own lives by working the barbecue for the lions.

  USES: The main use of these lions is to keep populations of large monsters in check. If large monsters think there are dwarf underbed lions about, they run away, unless they are sensible cows.

  HATES: Green rabbits. By the time rabbits are ripe, they know better than to eat a dwarf underbed lion, but while they are ripening, most rabbits are very silly. The lions are sometimes chased by dogs and lamington monsters, and this annoys them. The main reason that they hide under beds is to get away from dogs and lamington monsters.

  LIKES: They really enjoy celery, b
ecause the crunching sound reminds them of the sound of a well barbecued large monster’s bones. It is possible that green rabbits mistake dwarf underbed lions for crunchy celery, but the green rabbits refuse to answer while their mouths are full.

  This monster shows its presence by taking buttons. It does this because dwarf underbed lions love to collect old buttons, and will often cheat, snipping them off clothes as well. If a lot of your buttons are missing, you know who to blame. If barbecue smells come out from under your bed quite often, then you almost certainly have underbed lions, and if your bed still has all its legs on the ground, they must be dwarf underbed lions.

  The mud monster will only stay under beds where there is a minimum of 20 litres of shark-free mud, but they may move in beneath a bed for a while if they believe mud is a possibility in the near future. For example, when people, trying to scare away dwarf underbed lions, accidentally put up a sign saying ‘deware of the bog’ instead of ‘beware of the dog’, this raises the mud monsters’ hopes and causes problems. Small homeless mud monsters may gather hopefully for a while before wandering off sadly when they realise there is no mud coming.

  Mud monsters make good pets, but they need a lot of exercise. Pedigreed mud monsters are expensive, but the wild ones that come around in the hope of finding an unoccupied bog have none of the temper tantrums of the pedigreed ones. Get a tank of mud, and make sure you sift the mud thoroughly to get all the sharks out. Once a month, you need to put on shark-proof gloves, wash the mud out, line the tank with shark-repellent paper and replace the mud.

  Mud monsters prefer their food to be easy to hide in the mud, so feed them on chocolates, but remember to remove any bright wrappings first, or they will starve, because they won’t want the food. They also like brown onions, brown carrots, and brown oranges, which you can buy at any browngrocer’s shop. They will accept bright food if they are hungry enough, but only if the food is wrapped in brown paper or they are blindfolded.

  Mud monster experts say that mud monsters all speak the same language, and that they have more than 30 words for what we just call mud. The range of words is needed to reflect differences in texture, colour, taste and three other things that humans cannot detect. Their favourite muds are the ones called zwongle, glop, glom and slup.

  ORIGINS: This monster probably began in the bogs of Ireland, but when many Irish people left Ireland in small ships called droves during the 19th century, they either took some mud monsters with them, or the mud monsters stowed away, probably disguised as morphing murphies.

  SIZE: This is variable. Mud monsters are able to regenerate parts that they lose to careless mud alligators, but if there is plenty of food, they will grow to about the size of a clenched fist or a bad-tempered potato, and then divide in two. Unless you are looking for a pet, always take the bad-tempered potato, because you can eat it. You can’t eat a mud monster.

  UNUSUAL THINGS: They are mud coloured, and very fast moving. When mud monsters live under a bed, they change their feet to match the shape of the shoes they find there.

  IS A THREAT TO: Chocolate supplies. Chocolate biscuits. Slow-moving brown bears, especially the ones that smell of chocolate. They also chase cryptobears which always smell of chocolate, but they never catch them—cryptobears are too hard to see.

  USES: If some chocolates have mysteriously disappeared in your house, you can always try blaming the mud monsters. They make excellent pets, even if they are a bit messy, but any muddy footprints in the house that look like they were made by your shoes can be blamed on your mud monster. This can be very useful if you are a forgetful elephant or if you are just a forgetful non-elephant. (If you are not sure what you are, look in the mirror and twitch your nose. If this knocks the mirror down, you are an elephant.)

  HATES: Mud alligators, drain monsters, chocolates wrapped in foil, foil wrapped in chocolate.

  LIKES: Mud in large quantities; sharkproof watches; chocolate; promises that mud will be available in the near future; promises of chocolate; chocolate-flavoured mud and chocolate mud cake; garlic in chocolate; chocolate in garlic; chocolate dipped in chocolate.

  This monster is mainly recognised by the muddy tracks it leaves, and by the otherwise unexplained disappearance of chocolate in your house.

  This species is now listed in The Red Book of Monster Conservation as endangered, because there are only a few left alive. There are fewer and fewer moats to live in, and hardly any troubadours to eat, so the moat monster has been replaced in most habitats by the pool shark. Moat monsters do not come into houses unless you have a moat outside and troubadours inside.

  Some people say they have no sense of taste, because they eat tubas. Other people say this is proof that they have excellent taste indeed. Yet others say it is all a mistake, that the moat monsters have their ears blocked with mud, and used to eat tubers like potatoes, but the morphing murphies persuaded them to change to tubas, because the short-sighted moat monsters sometimes ate a morphing murphy by mistake. Nobody is certain, and the surviving moat monsters won’t say, but for a very long time, moat monsters have eaten troubadours and tubas.

  People in the Olden Days had problems like bad teeth; dragons; robber barons and evil wizards, but the worst problem of all was Bad Music, most of it played on the tuba. Since the reign of King Corkedred the Dubious, every castle has had a special chute called the tuba door. This was used for dropping tuba players in the moat, right in front of the moat monster’s lair, but the tuba players would keep playing, even under water, forcing the monster to retreat, and letting the tuba player escape to offend again.

  Luckily, this was in the Age of Iron. Any iron tuba played under water soon rusted away, but the name of the castle’s special exit hole, the tuba door, is now applied to the bad singers instead. The name ‘troubadour’ just means a singer to us, but in the Olden Days, it meant a bad singer or musician of any sort who was likely to be ejected through the tuba door. One reason for troubadours being bad singers is that most of them were actually heroes in disguise, people with no training in music, who were trying to sneak into the castle to rescue somebody.

  It was the work of the moat monsters, cleaning up the many tubas and troubadours that ended the Dark Ages. We all should say ‘thank you’ to the moat monsters.

  ORIGINS: Once upon a time, when people lived in castles with moats, every moat had a monster or three. Their job was eating invaders who tried to swim the moat and troubadours who were thrown in it. Having to eat troubadours made the moat monsters rather cranky. This is why they always saved the tubas until last, because eating tubas made them happy again.

  SIZE: Large enough to swallow both a troubadour and a tuba in one gulp.

  UNUSUAL THINGS: They have very large teeth, which means they have trouble getting toothbrushes of a proper size, so they often have scraps of tuba between their teeth. When their teeth fall out, they can only eat pond weed.

  IS A THREAT TO: People who make Bad Music.

  USES: Isn’t chomping tubas enough?

  HATES: Boy bands; troubadours; marching viola bands; glockenspiel bands, lithophone music; accordion quartets; ocarinas; and uphill tortoise stampedes.

  LIKES: Jokes about tubas or moats and motets. Large toothbrushes make them really happy. Most moat monsters would like to travel the world and work to promote world peace.

  This monster has a body plan quite like that of an axolotl on steroids and vitamin supplements. There are usually a few lumpy bits in the middle, especially if it has eaten a tuba recently.

  These are small one-legged bats with long bodies, and a chirruping call. When they are grabbed by their leg, they take a deep breath, go rigid, and then they can be used to hit things. Because cricket bats know this, they usually lurk in corners, with terrified looks on their faces.

  Only one cricket bat has ever been given a chance at fame. Mistislav Draghoul, the famous stunt artist of 1930s Hollywood appeared as a stand in and body double in many scenes for Jiminy Cricket. He was also in two production
s of ‘Count Dracula’, which was originally going to be called ‘Count Henry Blenkinsop’, but was renamed in honour of Draghoul, because ‘Dracula’ sounded more frightening. This is not surprising, because Mistislav Draghoul was his working name. His real name was C.V. Muddle.

  Obviously the producers had not actually met the real Count Henry Blenkinsop, whose table manners and boring conversation have terrified people on eight continents. (This number of continents is correct: Atlantis sank after a visit from Count Henry Blenkinsop that made all of the Atlanteans run to the other coast, screaming. This tipped the continent over and sank it. Blenkinsop was the only survivor.)

  Following the lead of Mistislav Draghoul, several other cricket bats have since tried to break into the movies, but their acting has always been too wooden.

  Nobody has been able to explain why cricket bats are restricted to parts of the world where English is spoken. There used to be cricket bats in the USA until the 1860s, when they died out. Nobody is quite sure why this happened.

  ORIGINS: The first cricket bats were bred on the North York Moors of England, in a secret laboratory disguised as a ruined abbey, the property of the evil Count Henry Blenkinsop. Actually, it wasn’t his at all—his mother stole it from two orphan children, and left it to Henry. She drove the children out into the snow, where they were adopted by kindly werewolves, who brought them up and trained them in the ways of Revenge, a small village nearby. The werewolves, helped by some of the cricket bats, chased Blenkinsop into a river where he sank and went over a waterfall. Serves him right.