Update on the Beastie Deal

The Young Folks’ Guide to Beasties
By Willard Mardi
(Alias Adora Svitak)

An Introduction
To the Beastie
Debate

The history of beasties has long been debated over by the famous archaeologists Soront and Toraday. While Soront’s theory was that beasties were calm, innocent, and tame until proven otherwise, Toraday vehemently disagreed.
‘The nature of all beasties’ Toraday said in his lecture at Thormin Hall to quite a number of eager college students, ‘is always vicious and crafty. Wait and strike, wait and strike. This is how beasties find their food.’
However, a new paper from Soront’s private collection of beastie research, kept hidden behind a rusty toilet for over a decade, brings things to a new light.
‘This paper from Soront,’ the Licensed Beastie Philosopher of Cambridge College in England said, ‘is perhaps the key to one of the greatest questions in history – are beasties tame or wild? This paper describes one of Soront’s personal experience meeting a calm beastie named Asilefa, who welcomed him into her dwelling and gave him tea.’
However, there is living proof to defend Toraday’s view on the subject. Felisa Rogers, a direct beastie descendant of the twelve ruthless beasties who lived before the dawn of time, is a teacher at Seeds of Learning school in Redmond, Washington, USA, and often bares her teeth and sharpens her claws when a student does something wrong. Controversy, puzzlement, and simple confusion has followed ‘the deal on beasties’ since 1159, when a beastie was discovered off the coast of Africa by shipwrecked Arabians, and I do not think that we are about to break the mystery right now.

An Introduction
To Beasties’
Habits and
Hobbies


Beasties tend to be gentle WHEN PLEASED. [Study suggestion – use a model of a beastie to test your skills – not a real one!) Meeting humans is not exactly pleasing, but eating one can turn the wildest beastie into a gentle, humble creature.
“Once upon a time there lived a beastie named Hurra-Hurra who liked to eat little children. After eating children she would be very nice.” That is an example from the hidden afterward of Hansel and Gretel, which was excavated from Utopia Bestia Malvada, an inhabitable ‘city of the beasts’ near the Bermuda Triangle. This gives credence to Toraday’s theory that the nature of beasties was vicious and crafty. Soront’s theory is still approved by those who feel safer thinking of beasties as the make-believe antagonists of nursery stories, but Toraday’s descendants and disciples are scattered about the world. Fights often broke out between the two beastiology enemies, one of the most famous being the Thomas vs. Samuel duel in 1789.
We shall now do a bit more of talking about the ‘habits and hobbies’ of beasties. The habits of beasties include:
· Washing after dinner, not before. This seems to be because beasties tend to get more blood on their paws/claws/monster hands after devouring the unlucky victim.
· Circling trees before scraping. Scraping trees is another habit because it tends to give the eucalyptus traymin, or energy vitamin, to the beastie after eating.
· Pulling up any violets, roses, hyacinths, tulips, etc, before creating a new lair. This is probably because weeds are the preferred “decoration plant” for beastie homes.
Hobbies of beasties are much harder to discover; the only way to study hobbies of beasties in the early 1800s was to get in close-range with one, and of course that meant there was a danger of the beastie eating you. However, when Don Juan Ramon Coré de Calla, a rich hacienda owner in Mexico, invented the Beastie Binoculars Model 1000, using up the rest of his slowly draining inheritance, the following beastie hobbies and games were revealed:
· Fishing with one right hand paw and one left leg paw.
· Leaving food from the day’s hunt by the river where other beasties raced to steal it. If another beastie stole your food, that was too bad. If you managed to successfully guard your food, the beasties who had dared try to steal your food were forced to give their hunting day food to that beastie.
· Knitting with shark fins and twigs, which, if actually finished, will create a huge robe of twigs, covering most of the face (except for the ears, eyes, nose, and mouth) and all the rest of the body. Wearing this robe is a sign that you are hard-working, or a “peasant beastie”, so most do not deign to finish their knitting.
· Reading Beastie Runes, which are a mix of Viking runes, Chinese characters, and Egyptian Hieroglyphics. The only people who are allowed to read Beastie Runes are those who have passed a special Beastie tribe test.
Many people have disagreed with this treatise, but all our information has been proved, disproved, proved again and searched thoroughly. Guaranteed.

An Introduction
To the Anatomy
Of Beasties

The anatomy of Beasties is complicated enough to be considered college level; however it is simple enough to suit the beasties, who like to spend their time thinking on complicated plots to capture rabbits instead of spending their time thinking about complicated bodies.
Drs. Tremerson and Tillerton, licensed Beastiotoligists, both agree that the anatomy of beasties consists of one huge skeleton and a tiny heart, with a lot of other stuff. The heart is tiny because both the stomach and the brain take up most of the body. These are kept tightly inside by two ribcages, which first circle inside and then circle outside, on the fur. There are four long, thick bones for the limbs, and huge muscles. Only the legs of a beastie can bend, however, due to a problem with the arms of Beastie Bob who was the ancestor of all beasties.
Beasties have three sets of nerves. One is for the “back body” (beastiessius ellgirarum), one is for the “middle body” (beastiessius mellgirarum) and the “front body” (beastiessius sellgirarum). If hit in the back, middle, or front body, beasties will first feel excited, then happy, and finally melancholy. Total it lasts about three seconds.

An Introduction To
The Personal Life
Of Beasties

Beasties tend to have many children (by the R.B.S, or Regular Beastie Standards, ten a year), and it is very difficult to keep more than five children under your paw. Or hand. Humans already have a hard enough time with it. Therefore, beasties tend to rule their household through fear as to keep the children obedient and docile. When beastie children grow to the age of ten, they are taken to view their first hunt. This is generally done in packs. This gives beastie mothers/matriarchs a chance to spank, scold, and etc, while the rest of the pack does a war dance involving antlers, shoving, and smelly fishes. To probe farther into the personal life of the beasties is regarded as impolite, but what do I care? Let us begin studying a beastie’s personal life.
Teenage beasties tend to be rebellious, bossy, and independent. This is the age where beasties become obsessed with carnivorous diets, trimmed fur, and other such things. They are influenced by the cultures of the tiger, the lion, the leopard, and the jaguar.
The greatest ambition of a teenage beastie is to be chosen for the once-in-a-century coming-of-age ceremony, probably because this particular ceremony offers much free refreshment. A teenage beastie must first be nominated by their parents, however, and not many parents are that eager to nominate their rebellious offspring. Therefore teenage beasties force themselves to act obedient and entirely respectful towards their parents in hopes of tricking them into nominating them. This strategy does not often work, however, and most of the time earns the teenage beastie the severest punishment that can lawfully be inflicted upon any beastie—going to bed without supper.
Older beasties are more private and often hire beastie lawyers to protect their personal information. However, it can be easily concluded that these senior citizens of the beastie community dote upon their grandchildren and great-grandchildren and so on, perhaps because they feel that they were too harsh with their own children when they were younger. There was even a gift-giving beastie holiday these old beasties created to be able to give gifts and receive gifts without being laughed at, which you can read about in the next chapter.

An Introduction To
The Holidays of
Beasties

One of the major holidays of the beastie community is “grrgarglewachadfdfmelldam”, or grrgargwachdfmedam in shorter terms, better known as Christmas. The Christmas the Beasties celebrate is somewhat different, however. For instance, there is no Santa Claus, simply the Potato-Bellied Devil Who Steals Gifts from Humans and Gives ‘Em to Beasties. A popular gift in an average beastie household would be something like a new hunting device, warm pawsulls (flat shoes made of dried leaves and mud, tied by a strap of leather), or a new raft. Like us, beasties put up stockings, except they call them Trrgrrgrowls and decorate them with thorns. This is basically the only holiday on the beastie calendar except for The Meatteargrrgrowl, a grand event which is mainly made up of dancing and eating. For more information go to www.spaces.msn.com/adorasvitak, add a comment saying you wish to learn more about beastie holidays, and I will get back to you shortly.

An Introduction
To Beastie Religion
And Culture

Beasties are divided into tribes, each tribe worshiping its own god. For instance, a more aggressive tribe, a band of beastie hunters, might worship the Hunter God Gralvirgoreessiunmeat, while a more agricultural tribe might worship Aterroya, Goddess of Rain and Sun and Crops. Beasties create new deities by the minute, so there is no real official religion.
As for culture, most beasties like to hunt, but some like to farm. Those who farm are usually beasties shunned from the hunting groups because of lack of swiftness, smartness, or other qualities a good beastie hunter needs. Over time these farming groups multiplied and multiplied until there were two groups; the Hunters and the Farmers. There were also Explorers (who worshipped the Sailor Spirit Samorrissail), but they hardly came up in the history books. Farmers held festivals to show their appreciation of Aterroya or whoever they worshipped, where there was more joyful dancing and much consuming of alcohol, whereas the Hunters did more serious dancing and worshipping.

An Introduction To
The Hunting Strategies
Of Beasties

Beasties are expert hunters and have many different hunting strategies to catch their prey. One of the most important strategies is one every beastie child learns at the age of ten:
TREAD CAREFULLY AND POUNCE. The “Tread carefully and Pounce” strategy involves much tiptoeing, and will get food for a beastie any time. Basically a beastie must hide, advance, and strike. A more complicated hunting strategy beasties use is the:
FLATTER AND DEVOUR strategy. The Flatter and Devour strategy involves complimenting the “talent” of your prey. Beasties tend to compliment most often the looks or voice of the prey, this causing the prey to get more cocky and daring and then, well, into the beastie’s mouth for them. One of the Beastie Teamwork strategies is the:
SURROUND AND ATTACK strategy. Surround and Attack needs to have at least twelve cooperative beasties, with practice in the Tread Carefully and Pounce strategy. These beasties will form a circle around prey and attack from all sides. This is only used, however, with packs and only if the prey is something large or is in great number. A strategy used for teaching child beasties to hunt is the:
RUN QUICKLY AND DO IT strategy. The hunter beastie only needs to run quickly and sink its teeth into the neck of the prey, and does not have to worry about hiding or anything else. This is not actually used very much in real beastie hunting, but it is a handy strategy to use in strategy practice because it helps beastie children run faster. It is also a last resort strategy.


AFTERWORD ON BEASTIE
INFORMATION AND
COPYRIGHT
Any scientists, beastioligists, reference librarians, taxidermists, teachers, students, or any people who dare copy this manuscript and sell it for a profit above fifty cents will be fined double the amount of profit by the Beastie Copyright Protection Patent Office Law Firm.

THE END.