The Monster Maintenance Manual
Page 13
SIZE: They are quite small, about the size of a ripe rabbit.
UNUSUAL THINGS: They are the only known monster that likes mime artists, which can cause problems, because dwarf underbed lions hate mime artists, and the two monsters often live in the same space.
IS A THREAT TO: They are a problem for shoelace monsters, which waste a lot of time looking for the shoelaces on the bears’ iron shoes. There are no laces on their shoes, mainly because the underbed bears don’t know how to tie shoelaces.
USES: If you happen to be an invisigoth, underbed bears are very useful indeed, because you can eat them. If you have some visiting invisigoths in your room, underbed bears are useful, because they stop the invisigoths from getting hungry, and singing long laments for their homeland in Cold Urticaria, where there were fruit trees, bears and beehives everywhere. Aside from that, underbed bears are a complete nuisance, because of their noisy iron shoes.
HATES: The thing the underbed bears hate most of all is the smell of burnt toast, because burnt toast makes black crumbs which attract carbon worms which make a lot of silly noises. If they smell toast burning, they stampede, looking for the burning bread, so they can stamp on it. Many roll models have been injured when they were simply huddling in front of a fire, trying to get warm. Underbed bears hate it when ripe rabbits want to compare sizes with them. Ripe rabbits always push and shove each other, and they tread on the bears’ toes.
LIKES: If you ask them, they will tell you that they really like rap music, but if you ask them to explain this, you will discover that they think rap music means singing knock-knock jokes.
This monster is fond of collecting paper bags. It uses the paper bags to carry spare breadcrumbs when it goes on a long journey. If there aren’t any spare paper bags around your house, you may have been visited by a herd of underbed bears. Look under your bed, and if there are no breadcrumbs there, that is good evidence that you have had underbed bears. If you see a lot of paper bags full of breadcrumbs, the underbed bears are still somewhere in your house, but getting ready to move on. Or maybe you are called Hansel, or Gretel?
If you see one of these lurking in a tree, it looks just like a coconut, and like a coconut, it falls from a great height. The difference is that when nobody is looking, three legs come out of three holes on one end of a drop nutter, and it runs up the nearest tree, ready to drop again. When it has dropped on a human, a dog, a cat or a horse and knocked it out, it uses the nippers on the third leg to snip off some of the victim’s hair to use as nesting material.
It only uses the dropping trick to get nesting material, and never to get food. When it is hungry, it catches coconut crabs to eat raw. These crabs climb coconut palms, hoping for a dinner of fresh coconut, and end up being the dinner instead. Drop nutters are often hungry, because they prefer to climb fruit trees, and so they only get the coconut crabs who are on a fruit diet.
Even if a drop nutter gets into your house, it cannot climb high enough to do any harm, and it soon gets hungry and goes away. Underneath coconut palms, it is a different matter, so always be careful around coconut palms!
Some people protect themselves from drop nutters by living underground, but recently, they have started walking around with large cast-iron umbrellas. These are very heavy, so most users take the umbrellas around on a trolley, a skate board or a wheel barrow. There is just one problem: the noise!
The other answer is to wear a hat with a spike on the top. When Germany started to get colonies in Africa in the late 1800s, a lot of German soldiers were hurt or even killed by drop nutters, and so the German government developed a new metal helmet with a spike on top. For a while, the German soldiers dined each night on drop nutter shish kebab, and the species was endangered, but now it is bouncing back. Off people’s heads, some of the time.
ORIGINS: Because it mimics a coconut, it probably came from a tropical island, and it is only found where coconut palms grow. Some people say that it may be related to the barnacle, which also has limbs coming out of its head, but scientists say this is unlikely. The people say the barnacle is pretty unlikely as well, so nobody is at all sure. Except the scientists, who say that those people are even more unlikely, so there. The barnacles have not been asked what they think, but they probably regard the scientists as unlikely.
SIZE: The same size as a coconut but with a much friendlier manner. They always apologise to the people they hit, even if the people can’t hear them.
UNUSUAL THINGS: These monsters are not very bright, so they think that they can improve on their disguises by wearing bright Hawaiian shirts. It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to guess that it was the visigoths who told them this idea would work. They smell of ripe fruit, but given their preferred diet, this makes sense.
IS A THREAT TO: Coconut crabs, people sleeping under coconut palms.
USES: If the grownups in your house are being attacked at night by nose ghouls, you can use a couple of drop nutters to remove the hair that the nose ghouls have attached to their victims.
HATES: People with really pointy heads, people who put sharpened stakes in the ground with the pointy bit upwards, people who leave boulders under palm trees.
LIKES: Sky diving , trampolines, sky diving/trampoline relay races, waterfalls, rain drops and songs which have ‘down, down, down, derry down’ in the chorus.
This monster is sky blue, which (along with the Hawaiian shirts) spoils its disguise as a coconut when it is on the ground, but helps to hide it when it is up a tree, ready to drop on a victim. It’s a pity about the Hawaiian shirts, though.
These lizards climb around in wall cavities at night, making snickering noises that are very hard to put up with, if you are a nervous person. When you get nervous, this upsets the snickering lizards, who are really trying very hard to make friendly noises, but somehow, never quite get it right. So if you hear a snickering noise, you have to try very hard to look as though you are really happy about it, as this will make the snickering lizards feel happy, and they will then stop snickering.
Of course, the snickering noise might also be coming from some saltwater warthogs, and they are monsters that really do mean to be nasty. But if it is saltwater warthogs, the best thing you can do is still to pretend that the noise makes you happy, because nothing annoys a saltwater warthog more than believing that they are making somebody happy.
Snickering lizards seem to have a bad effect on Schrödinger’s Cheshire cats, because when the lizards snicker, the cats think they are being laughed at, and that makes them want to disappear as soon as they can.
You will hardly ever find snickering lizards and soap slurpers in the same place, because snickering lizards just know that sooner or later a molar mole will turn up, and experience has taught them all about what happens after that. So they move on.
ORIGINS: The snickering lizards came from Africa and were tamed and trained to fetch cocoa beans for the growers. But they got to like the taste of cocoa, and used to sit up in the trees, eating the beans and snickering at the cocoa growers on the ground where they had to stand, watching their profits go down the lizards’ throats.
SIZE: Snickering lizards are only 10 to 15 centimetres long, and shaped like most lizards, but they have long jaws like a crocodile, and they can unhinge their jaws to swallow a large object like an Easter egg.
UNUSUAL THINGS: They have some odd habits. They like to play chess, but they are not very good at it because they keep forgetting not to eat the pawns. They also like to eat tennis balls, and for this reason, snickering lizards are forbidden to attend any Grand Slam tennis tournaments. They like to tie spaghetti in knots, but they enjoy untangling fishing lines and wool (no monster is completely bad!)
IS A THREAT TO: Tennis balls and spaghetti, and they really like eating Lamington monsters. They are also a serious nuisance to Schrödinger’s Cheshire cats, even though they don’t mean to be.
USES: They are very good at fetching things, but they always swallow the things they carry. To get whateve
r it is back, you need to hold them by the tail and shake them. Sometimes, you need to wave a baseball bat at them to show that you are serious. They won’t be happy to know that you know this, but snickering lizards are a good place to get rid of all those left-over slivers of soap in the bathroom. Put them in a dish with a sign that says ‘Molar moles: help yourself!’ and stand aside.
HATES: Baseball bats, which like to eat them. They also hate molar moles, who push cakes of soap into their mouths which makes them froth. What they really hate is frothing when they snicker. Even the slightest whiff of soap is enough to drive them away.
LIKES: They like to eat eggs, chocolate eggs most of all, or any other sort of chocolate for that matter. The thought of chocolate seems to be the main thing that makes them snicker. Count Henry Blenkinsop Junior tried chocolate-flavoured soap on a group of them, but they snickered so loudly that he never heard of them (or anything else) ever again.
This monster is most likely to be the reason why eggs keep disappearing from your refrigerator, and it is the most common cause of chocolates disappearing in the night.
If the soap in your bathroom is always sloppy and it disappears fast, there is probably a soap slurper living in your bathroom cupboard, (although it might also be a hairyoddity). Soap slurpers are nice, except for their habit of wanting to hide in shoes when the sun is up, and the dreadful noises they make while feeding.
Soap slurpers prefer it when there are no snickering lizards and molar moles around, because the moles will steal the slurpers’ dinner to make the lizards quiet. It’s bad enough to have your dinner stolen, but the noise of bubbly snickering is too much for them altogether.
Soap slurpers do not actually eat the soap, they just take it into their mouths and suck on it like a lolly. When they have had enough, they spit out what is left. If they hear somebody coming, they can slip down the drain but this makes the soap pop out of their mouths. If you hear a noise when you walk into the bathroom or laundry and then you find a slimy cake of soap in the basin, there is probably a soap slurper nearby.
They are very neat and tidy, and during the night, they will sort all your toys out and put them where they belong. They will put all of your dirty clothes in the laundry basket. If you want to keep your soap slurper friend, explain to your parents that if you tidy your room, the soap slurper will run away because it has nothing to do.
As you can read elsewhere in this book, scientists think some of the soap slurpers evolved to become today’s lamington monsters. You can test this by watching the reactions of unhappy-looking lamington monsters when you ask them ‘Why are you looking so sud?’
ORIGINS: They were probably once drain monsters who got tired of being made to drink so much water. By that time, they had learned to enjoy the taste of soap, so they became soap slurpers instead. They look quite like drain monsters, but they have a spiky bunch of bristles at the end of their tails.
SIZE: Soap slurpers are able to change their appearance, but they cannot change the size of their mouth, which is large enough to surround a fresh cake of soap.
UNUSUAL THINGS: The tail bristles are very distinctive, and they can’t change those either. They probably protect the soap slurper from being accidentally swallowed by a drain monster when they hide down a drain.
IS A THREAT TO: Cakes of soap that go out on their own and talk to strangers.
USES: Good at tidying up rooms, but nothing else much.
HATES: Detergents, because some are quite poisonous, and the rest make them sick. Molar moles which pick on them. Snickering lizards, because when they are around, the molar moles steal the soap slurpers’ dinner. They also loathe paparazzi, though they say they have no real reason for this, they just hate them. Could it be that the soap slurpers have some dark secrets? Soap slurpers believe that sometimes a lazy thunderguts will eat one of them, rather than looking for soap.
LIKES: Soap, tea with soap in it, soap-flavoured marmalade, mashed soap and soap salad. They are especially fond of roast soap, soap stars, soap pie, soap souffle and soap soup. They really enjoy watching soap operas that are set in soap factories.
This monster often disguises itself as a bath towel, so you need to count the number of towels in the bathroom each day, to see if an extra one has shown up. When they are hiding in a cupboard and feeding, they make a slurping sound that stops when you open the cupboard. Treat any towel whose eyes follow you around the room, with suspicion.
The cryptobears know all about Goldilocks, but their version of the story is rather different. According to them, Goldilocks was a burglar who had a good spin doctor on her staff. Anyhow, the bears say they came out of it as the baddies, and that is why they are still seeking revenge on humans, blowing on our hot food to make it go cold, slipping ice cubes into hot drinks and using portable microwaves on our ice creams. They wear camouflage suits and ride around on stealth bicycles, so they are very hard to see.
The truth is that the camouflage suits they wear are useless as camouflage, because the colours are all wrong. Our brains blank out things that are completely ridiculous like melting clocks, the nest of the crested tree camel, custard springs, jellyfish boots and the camouflage worn by the cryptobears. The result is that we should see them, but we don’t, even though they should be easy to see.
Cryptobears have a number of annoying habits. They take the last biscuit, they hide in shared bedrooms and make snoring noises, and so start lots of fights. They try to pass themselves off as teddy bears, but teddy bears don’t snore, and you can see them. If there is an invisible snoring lump in your sock drawer, it is probably a cryptobear.
On the other hand, it might be an invisigoth after too much banana curry. It might be a snoring morphing murphy, but they make the nearby trees turn purple. If this sounds impossible, a snoring morphing murphy is even more impossible.
ORIGINS: They seem to be a small relative of the Sun bear of Indonesia and Malaysia, but it is very hard to be sure, when they are so hard to see.
SIZE: About the size of a large teddy bear, but you can only tell this by feel.
UNUSUAL THINGS: They ride small stealth bicycles, but the one thing they cannot avoid is leaving wheel tracks wherever they go. If you see mystery bicycle tracks on the walls of your room, this could mean cryptobears are there.
IS A THREAT TO: Honey. If the honey is disappearing from the jar in the kitchen, or if the local bees are looking hungry, there may be cryptobears in the neighbourhood. They also like lizards, mice and grasshoppers, especially if they have been dipped in chocolate and honey.
USES: They are very useful if you need to get rid of large amounts of unwanted chocolate, honey or mice. If you make one your friend, it might be good at keeping hot food hot, and cool drinks cool. It might not be a good idea to trust it to keep chocolates cool on a hot day.
HATES: They hate the invisigoths who eat their cousins, the underbed bears. Cryptobears are blamed for most of the attacks on banjo bands, harp orchestras and pizzicato ensembles. There is no video footage, of course, but it has to be a monster which isn’t very plucky.
LIKES: Then again, they also like the invisigoths, who make them all their best camouflage and stealth gear. If you could see a cryptobear beside an invisigoth, it would have a puzzled look on its face as it tries to decide whether to be nice or nasty to the invisigoth. If you could see the invisigoth, it would probably look worried that you could see it, but we will never know. Cryptobears collect maps, because they like to know where they stand, which is generally in shallow water at the beach.
This monster is easy to spot. Just look out of the side of your eye for a bunch of bears in camouflage gear, carrying iceboxes, portable microwaves and fans. They bought the camouflage from a rather shifty-looking visigoth who shifted as fast as he could go, once he had his money, and before they could open the boxes. The fluoro camouflage trousers and the pink camouflage tops are very easy to see coming. People say the visigoth saw the bears coming even before they changed their clothes.
Because roll models have only one leg, they need to hop, but some of them now use skateboards to get around, and a few have been taught by the cryptobears to ride unicycles. The cryptobears like the roll models, because roll models hate honey—when they smell honey they start to go green.
This is a good way for cryptobears to find out where to look for honey. They just walk in the woods with a few roll models cycling with them. When the roll models can no longer be seen, this usually means they have gone green because there is honey nearby. Either that or underbed bears have eaten them, which is bad luck for the roll models and annoying to the cryptobears, who miss out on any honey in the area.
Or did the invisigoths get them?
ORIGINS: Some people suspect that the roll models evolved from post impressionists who wanted to downsize, others think they are related to the morphing murphies, but nobody really knows.
SIZE: About 10 centimetres across. Their height depends on whether or not any gutter otters or trolls have been close. Even then, when they have been trodden on, they usually manage to bounce back, after a time. Until they do, they look like pizza bases or burritos.