Eva Ibbotson - Let Sleeping Sea-Monsters Lie

But whether Algernon was happy or not I cannot tell you. Some things are easy and some things are difficult — and finding out whether a sea slug is happy is very difficult indeed!

Once upon a time three Scotsmen were walking through the Highlands on a cold winter’s day when they came across some most unusual footprints in the snow. They were the tracks of webbed feet with curved claws on the end and each track was absolutely enormous, about the size of a house.

“Now what on earth can that be?” said Chief MacGregor, a tall, thin Scotsman with scars on his hairy knees from fighting in a battle.

“Whatever it is, it’s mighty large,” said Chief MacCallum, a small, fat Scotsman whose stomach bulged roundly beneath his kilt.

“We had better follow the tracks and see where they lead,” said Chief MacDuff, an old, brave Scotsman who had lost a leg and painted his wooden one in the MacDuff colours of red, blue and green so that nobody would steal it.

So they followed the tracks of the webbed feet which looked as though whatever had made them was not only gigantic but also a bit knock-kneed and pigeon-toed because they pointed inwards. And when they had followed them for about an hour they came to a lake (only of course, being in Scotland, it was called a loch). At the edge of the loch there was the biggest nest they had ever seen, so big that it looked like one of those stockades made of logs that the settlers in America used to make to keep off Red Indians.

Inside the nest were three fluffy, round-eyed, goofy-looking chicks with mottled feathers and yellow beaks. However, when I say “chicks” I do not mean anything sweet and little and quaint. These chicks were the size of full-grown elephants, and as they jostled against each other and opened their huge beaks, the noise that came out was not “CHEEP!” but “BAA!”

The Scotsmen looked at each other and their knees beneath their kilts began to tremble because they knew they had been following the tracks of a BOOBRIE bird and that these chicks were Boobrie chicks. They also knew that the chicks were saying “Baa!” instead of “Cheep!” because what Boobries feed on, mostly, is sheep.

“What are we going to do?” quavered tall, thin MacGregor.

“The Boobrie will carry away all our livestock!” squeaked small, fat MacCallum.

“We must make a plan,” said brave MacDuff, striking his wooden leg with his walking stick.

So the Scotsmen walked back to their village and thought out what to do. They were quite right to be afraid. The Boobrie, which is a very Scottish bird, may not be very clever but it is so big that it seems to fill the whole sky when it appears and it is so strong that it can swoop down and carry off a sheep or a horse or a cow as easily as you could pick a daisy. A Boobrie’s eyes are round and black and crazy-looking, its beak is the size of a canoe, and when it flies it makes a mournful, honking noise like a foghorn with stomach ache.

So the three Scotsmen thought and thought about what to do and then brave old MacDuff struck his forehead and said:

“I know! We will disguise ourselves as sheep and when the Boobrie swoops down on us we will shoot it with our horse pistols.”

“And our blunderbusses!” yelled thin MacGregor.

“In its soft underbelly!” cried brave MacDuff.

Fat MacCullum didn’t say anything because the idea of pretending to be a sheep and popping off bullets at the Boobrie made his poor underbelly quiver like a jelly. But he did not wish to seem a coward so all three Scotsmen began then and there to dress up as sheep.

This was difficult. First they had to find some sheepskins that fitted over their backs and then they had to go down on their hands and knees and see if they looked like sheep which mostly they didn’t. MacDuff didn’t because you don’t often get sheep with wooden legs, and MacCallum didn’t because he was so fat that he bulged out pinkly underneath like a sausage does when you fry it without pricking it first. And MacGregor certainly didn’t because he had forgotten to take off his sporran and sheep with sporrans are very, very rare.

But in the end, by pulling and pushing at the skins and sticking extra bits of wool here and there they didn’t look quite so bad and when they had practised saying “Baa” a few times they set off for the moor above the loch where they had first seen the Boobrie tracks. They didn’t like to walk upright carrying their sheepskins in case the Boobrie was watching, so they crawled, and they had a very nasty time. Crawling in the snow is nasty anyway, and crawling in the snow while pretending to be a sheep and carrying a horse pistol, a blunderbuss and a catapult is even nastier. The Scotsmen fell and stumbled and their poor hairy legs, which weren’t quite covered by the sheep hides, turned blue with cold. When they tried to say “Baa” their teeth rattled like doors in a high wind. But they crawled on till they reached the moor and then they huddled together and waited.

They did not wait for long.

The Boobrie did not come from the sky. It rose from the waters of the lake and the sight was one to turn the bravest man to stone. First came its head with its mad, round, staring eyes and then its terrible beak, curved like a pelican’s to carry its prey, then its gigantic feathered body rising like a living island from the water and lastly its webbed and house-sized feet.

It was the mother Boobrie. She was hungry and she was worried about her chicks and as she circled the moor, darkening the sky with her huge wings and making the mournful, honking noise that Boobries make, her crazy eyes searched anxiously for something to give them to eat. Round and round flew the Boobrie, searching and honking, and presently the vast and worried bird saw exactly what she was looking for. Three sheep.