The Monster Maintenance Manual Read online

  If you want to get to know your pet monster you have to be able to see eye to eye with them. It helps if the monster has the same number of eyes as you. Of course, if you have a six-eyed thunderguts as a pet, you can always try looking at two eyes, then two eyes, then two eyes, but it isn’t the same. If you have a monster with fewer eyes than you, it’s fine to keep as a pet. An eye with fewer monsters than you is a different matter. Run!

  Making your monster decision

  You need to think about these things before you choose a monster:

  • does it make annoying noises?

  • does it smell dreadful?

  • does it have bad habits?

  • will it do things that get you into trouble?

  • can it be persuaded to do your homework? (trick question to see if you were paying attention: no, of course it won’t!)

  • will it be hard to feed?

  Once you have chosen your monster, the next thing to do is work out how you will look after it.

  Caring for monsters

  Monsters love freedom. That is the main thing you have to understand when you want to look after a monster. Putting monsters in cages is cruel. Give them somewhere nice to rest and sleep, feed them their favourite foods. And, talk gently to them.

  Making a monster-friendly garden

  Most monsters like a fish pond, flowers, a lawn to play on and trees to shelter under. This is especially important for monsters with skins like ours, because like us, they run the risk of sunburn and skin cancers. As a test, look around your garden, to see if you like it. Monsters like what we like—if they didn’t, they would stay away from us and we would never see them.

  If you’re choosing a moat monster, remember they like a nice, deep, muddy trench. It is probably a good idea to talk to your parents before you dig a moat, build a brick wall or choose a moat monster as a pet.

  Getting rid of annoying monsters

  Many young people get worried that a large monster might want to eat them. This is silly. There are almost no large monsters, and the really big ones don’t eat people, even if they pretend they might. They only say they do this so as to get a bigger slice of whatever you are eating. What the bigger monsters really like to eat is barbecued cow, roasted whole on the spit. So once you know this, you need to put up signs in a place where monsters can see them, saying ‘cow barbecue this way’, and point it inland, away from the nearest ocean.

  The monsters will walk off, and if everybody does the same thing, you will send a lot of large and hungry monsters away from the coast, towards the centre of your country. They will end up climbing mountains, maybe they will even walk through hot, dry deserts, getting hungrier and hungrier, losing weight as they go. Each time they shelter under a bed for the night, signs will urge them on again.

  If you live far from the coast, be aware that many coast-dwelling children will be sending their large hungry monsters your way. What do you do?

  Easy: you use a different sign, saying ‘all earlier signs wrong—cow barbecue moved back to where you started—sorry!’ Now the monsters have to turn around and go back again, getting thinner and thinner, with nothing to think about but a cow barbecue. In a while, all that thinking about barbecued cow makes them start to grow horns and hooves. Walking back to where they started, they trudge wearily through the deserts, down the mountains, along the valleys, over the ridges, around the canyons, through the torrents, losing weight as they go away.

  By the time they get back to where they began, they are all reduced to small monsters with horns and hooves, and we all know that small monsters with horns and hooves do not eat meat, but they are really handy to have around when the lawn mower breaks down.

  On the other hand, dwarf underbed lions really enjoy a meal of fried large monster fillets. If you have a pride of dwarf underbed lions, you can save on the cost of feeding them. If you don’t own any dwarf underbed lions, just leave a notebook around, open at a page with the heading ‘Keeping Dwarf Underbed Lions, Field Notes’. This will send any large monsters in your area scurrying off in a rush and a clatter.

  You can also make a cover for a book that says ‘Advanced Dwarf Underbed Lion Keeping’. When the large and hungry monsters see this, they will get the message that this is not a good place to live.

  If you are a cow, you have a big problem. To be blunt, it’s what you might call a monster problem. See the section on cooking monsters, and get yourself a chef’s hat to hide your horns. And if you run into a pride of dwarf underbed lions, mention your cooking skills. Dwarf underbed lions have trouble holding any sort of lighter to light the stove, and they find it very hard turning the pages of a cookbook, so are always happy to hire a chef.

  What monsters really hate

  If you’re happy to have the hungry dwarf underbed lions chasing monsters out of your house, all is well. But if their dwarf lion noises keep you awake, you will need a quieter way to chase the monsters.

  Start by making the floor under your bed as unattractive to monsters as possible. That means leaving things around so monsters decide there are better places to go.

  Remember, monsters only worry people who feel uncomfortable around monsters. As soon as you have a pet monster, even an invisible one, the rest of them lose their power. As soon as the monsters know you are in charge, they want to run away. If you look like a threat to a monster, they will have to run away, stopping just long enough to make secret marks near your house to warn other monsters.

  But, think carefully before you do this, as many monsters are fun to keep. Work out what monsters you have, and do things that drive out those that are going to be pests and the nuisances. Keep the rest.

  It is unkind to threaten monsters who are harmless but if you really need to get rid of some monsters, you will find ideas.

  First, we need to look at the sorts of monster that you might find in your house and garden, and how they live. Once you know that, you can control the number and types of monsters that live with you.

  The gobblesock lives behind washing machines and hunts for socks inside the washing machines when they are running. It has a most unpleasant habit—it gobbles socks, or more accurately, it gobbles one sock out of any pair. Clever humans have known for a very long time that even the hungriest gobblesock can be beaten by never putting pairs of socks in the machine together.

  There was once a forgetful elephant who was a poet, but he used to forget that he was, unless somebody reminded him every morning. This elephant sometimes called himself Coleridge and once he wrote a poem about gobblesocks. It went:

  It is an ancient gobblesock,

  It gobbleth one of two,

  And leaves me sad and sockless

  In a cold and clammy shoe

  Coleridge was later persuaded by a person from Porlock that an ancient mariner made more sense in his poem. He should never have listened, because verse about gobblesocks is much more interesting, especially to gobblesocks. They say there is nothing interesting about a person from Porlock. Fair enough.

  Poetry is important to monsters. Most of them hate really bad verse, so if you don’t want monsters under your bed, you need to leave lots of bad poems under the bed (or, if you have a hard-to-remove cupboard monster, put the poems in the cupboard). Cupboard monsters will not stay in a house that has a resident gobblesock, so, if the cupboard monsters are creating too much activity in your cupboards, and you don’t mind wearing odd socks, encourage a gobblesock to make itself at home.

  Gobblesocks won’t be scared by bad poems though; they don’t care how bad the verse is, so long as it is about them. They also write fairly bad verse about themselves, which is why cupboard monsters move out when a gobblesock moves in.

  ORIGINS: The real question is: what did gobblesocks eat before there were any socks to gobble? Fossil experts say they came from the deserts of Mesopotamia, where a bird called the banded pillock makes nests of camel hair, and that the gobblesocks used to eat pillock nests. This makes sense, because if gobble
socks like camel hair, this would explain why there are so few camel-hair socks around today; they get eaten first, whenever they appear!

  SIZE: About the same size as a football, but able to flatten themselves out so they can hide behind washing machines.

  UNUSUAL THINGS: Can survive the whirling motion of a full spin-dry cycle. They also write poetry that makes you feel you have just been through a full spin-dry cycle yourself. Most of their friends are spin doctors or big wheels among the revolutionaries.

  IS A THREAT TO: Any of the many cupboard monsters, socks and tennis balls. Nobody knows why, but gobblesocks absolutely hate tennis balls and chew the fur off them. Some scientists think it is so they get a balanced diet, others say they do it just to be annoying. (It certainly works to annoy bucket bogles!)

  USES: They can be used to get rid of most types of cupboard monster but best, if you are wearing odd socks, and somebody asks why your socks don’t match, blame it on your household gobblesock.

  HATES: Gobblesocks hate socks in pairs and will take incredible risks to gobble one of a matching pair, even diving into a washing machine on spin-dry. Gobblesocks really hate socks with sea urchins in them and they get nervous and run away if they see a pointy stick. Gobblesocks also detest bad verse, unless it is about them.

  LIKES: Socks in any size and shape, so long as they are not in pairs; green peas in wasabi and curried socks. Gobblesocks really enjoy looking at themselves in mirrors.

  This monster is usually seen entirely dressed in colourful socks. It eats all the dull and boring socks that it finds, and keeps the bright ones for clothing. If you see what looks like a heap of bright socks under your bed, poke it with a pointy stick, to see if it runs. Whatever you do to gobblesocks, they will come running back if they hear you start reading or reciting poetry about gobblesocks.

  The first thing that you notice about a forgetful elephant is it is small. That is because the first thing forgetful elephants forget, is to grow. Second, you notice they have a knot tied in their trunk to remind them to do something or other but the knot also stops them breathing in dust—a good thing, as dust might make them sneeze. The third thing you notice is their smell, because they forget to have a bath, most years. Maybe that’s what the reminder knot in their trunks was for.

  If a forgetful elephant comes into your house, it may hide under your bed, but it is just as likely to settle down in your sock drawer. Scientists say this is because it is a distant relative of the gobblesock, but whenever you ask one of the forgetful elephants, it will probably tell you it can’t remember. It is no good asking a gobblesock either, because it can’t talk with a mouth full of socks.

  You won’t get a plague of forgetful elephants in your house. That’s because if a forgetful elephant comes to your house, it forgets where it was when it goes out to feed in the morning, so it won’t come back. Still, it may stay in your house for weeks if it forgets to go and feed! Forgetful elephants usually forget what they look like, so they have no reason to form large herds, but occasionally, if there are a lot of interesting socks somewhere, they gather in small crowds.

  Forgetful elephants are bright custard-yellow, with blue tusks, and they wear striped socks that they take from sock drawers, though they have all forgotten why.

  ORIGINS: The elephants used to know, but they have forgotten. They appear more like the elephants of Thailand than any others, and so they might have come from there.

  SIZE: Remarkably tiny, about the size of a small finch on a starvation diet.

  UNUSUAL THINGS: These monsters radiate forgetfulness around them, so if you find yourself forgetting things in the morning, it may be the result of a small group of forgetful elephants sheltering under your bed (we know that they don’t form herds, but they keep forgetting, remember?). It is unusual to see them with a knot in their trunks, but they usually smell like a rotten onion.

  IS A THREAT TO: Gobblesocks. These elephants are after the same socks but can get them from the drawer, while gobblesocks have to wait until they are in the washing machine. If the forgetful elephants get the socks first, the gobblesocks may starve.

  USES: There is a use for them, but they always forget to say what it is.

  HATES: They hate sneezing—tying the knot in their trunk probably stops this. They really hate places with no socks. They loathe vacuum cleaners because they believe that Nature abhors a clean vacuum, and something else that they will remember, one day soon. They hate clean because it’s often vacuous.

  LIKES: Wearing fancy dress, and they are fond of yellow sticky notes that they write on and then forget to read. They enjoy hearing old riddles, because to a forgetful elephant, every riddle is new. They love murder mysteries, which they read over and over, because they always forget who the killer was, as soon as they shut the book. Most of all, they like eating bright custard, because if they dribble, nobody can see they have made a mess.

  This monster is the same shape as an ordinary Thai elephant, but a lot smaller, bright yellow, and it wears socks. Do not assume that an elephant without socks is not a forgetful elephant, because it may be a forgetful elephant that forgot to wear socks. Or maybe it was beaten to the sock stack by a gobblesock in the area. Like a lot of monsters, forgetful elephants don’t like names much, and some people think they became forgetful so they did not have to remember their names.

  You may have heard people say that somebody is raven mad. They may not know it, but they are recalling the first mad raven, named from the English village it lived in (known in the Middle Ages as Quoth but called Goth since the 18th century), near Nether Moor. The modern goth ravens are descended from this first one. The main thing you notice is they are all black.

  Goth ravens fly very fast, so fast that their feathers get hot or even catch on fire and the heat chars the feathers around the edges. Their colour is called jet black, and jet aircraft get their name because they fly almost as fast as goth ravens, even if most planes aren’t painted black.

  The charred bits of a goth raven attract plagues of carbon worms to the bird’s nest, where they whistle as they eat the burnt crunchy bits of the raven, slowly cleaning them up, singing to each other as they go. Carbon worms know only one song, the ‘One-Note Samba’, and they sing it over and over. This explains why goth ravens are livid and furious.

  They like hunting drop nutters because they hate the drop nutters’ songs, but they live in different places, so they don’t catch many. They also hate the invisigoths’ sad songs about their homeland in Cold Urticaria. Again, they have no luck, because even if they can hear the invisigoths, they can’t see them.

  The goth ravens should never be confused with visigoths or invisigoths, but you can confuse any goth raven by persuading your dog to walk backwards (this usually confuses the dog as well) or by reading poetry sideways. This also confuses most poems.

  ORIGINS: The goth raven originated in the bleak landscape of Nether Moor, a hideous place below the Down Downs of England. From there, it spread across the world, though nobody knows how this happened or who did it, but there is a large reward on offer for the name of the people responsible. A nasty dungeon awaits them.

  SIZE: The same as the ordinary raven, except goths have very large feet.

  UNUSUAL THINGS: Goth ravens hardly ever come into houses unless the house is painted black, inside and out. They never wear socks unless they want to put on gumboots to leave footprints on the ceiling.

  IS A THREAT TO: Joy, laughter, happiness, some people called Edgar, white bread. They like to trample on ice cream sellers and people who say things like ‘really cool’ and ‘chill out!’. One goth raven clan like to shout ‘ever thaw’ as they pull out the plugs of refrigerators, so a lot of people say they threaten public health.

  USES: If placed in a bucket of wet cement, the goth raven will become a handy paperweight (but you don’t really need the raven for this). Looking at the paperweight makes an entertaining alternative to television outside the ratings period.

  HATES: Gum
boot greeners, songs with ‘Down, Down, Down Derry Down’ in them, eiderdowns, and down trains. Because goth ravens don’t like colours, they don’t usually like flowers or parrots. They really hate people calling them plucky. The thing they hate most of all is snow, because it combines whiteness and cold. The way they see it, ice cream is just sweet snow, so even black ice cream is on their hates list.

  LIKES: Black pudding, burnt toast, reading black books, sharing misery, lost cawses.

  This monster is recognised by its mournful cry of ‘Nether Moor’—its original home, and its habit of perching on busted palaces. At night, the black goth ravens are hard to see, but if you can smell burnt feathers, there is probably a goth raven in the house. Either that, or you need to go somewhere else to buy your chicken burgers.

  Dangerous goldfish are only dangerous to smaller goldfish, but as they are the largest of all the goldfish, that means they are quite dangerous. But there’s good news; they have a very big head, and this causes them trouble when they try getting into goldfish bowls. This is why they lurk at the bottom of swimming pools. They change their colour to what they think is a camouflage pattern that looks like the mainly yellow and black Macleod tartan, and then they wait for goldfish to arrive. Often though, they are seen and eaten by pool sharks, before they get a chance to breed, so dangerous goldfish are rare. This makes pool sharks even more hungry.

  The tartan colour scheme makes sense if you know that visigoths persuaded the dangerous goldfish tribe to pay them (the visigoths) to be their colour advisers. It probably explains why visigoths are poor, because their clients are usually eaten before they can pay their bill.

  ORIGINS: Nobody knows where the dangerous goldfish began, but there are some curious fossils in the Gobi Desert which look very like very big dangerous goldfish (or maybe a small Tyrannosaurus rex).