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    Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop: And Other Practical Advice in Our Campaign Against the Fairy Kingdom
    Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop: And Other Practical Advice in Our Campaign Against the Fairy Kingdom
    Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop: And Other Practical Advice in Our Campaign Against the Fairy Kingdom
    Ebook168 pages2 hours

    Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop: And Other Practical Advice in Our Campaign Against the Fairy Kingdom

    By Reginald Bakeley and Clint Marsh

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    About this ebook

    Help is on the way! In the tradition of Lemony Snicket and Roald Dahl, Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop shows how to banish those pesky dark Fairy creatures who are ready to thwart every last pleasure, be it gardening, country hikes, or even getting a good night’s sleep.

    In this charming guide, "fairy hunter" Reginald Bakeley offers practical instructions to clear your home and garden of these unsettling inhabitants, and banish them from your chicken coop and kitchen cupboard forever!

    In Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop readers will discover:

    • Why a bustle in one’s hedgerow may be cause for alarm
    • Why a garden fumigator may come in handy on evenings at the pub
    • Why a toy merchant, a butcher, and a Freemason are among your best allies in the fight against the fey

    Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop is the only complete manual on how to identify, track, defend, and destroy those bothersome brownies, goblins, dwarves, scheming flowerfairies, and other nasty members of the fairy realm.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRed Wheel
    Release dateOct 1, 2012
    ISBN9781609258047
    Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop: And Other Practical Advice in Our Campaign Against the Fairy Kingdom
    Author

    Reginald Bakeley

    Reginald Bakeley is best known for his longstanding editorship of Phooka, The Journal of the Overland Mallet Club. An avid sportsman and defender of rural life, Bakeley has devoted himself to public awareness and management of fairy populations throughout Britain. Visit him at www.goblinproofing.com.

    Read more from Reginald Bakeley

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    • 3/5
      This very droll humor book describes how to contain or take advantage of the fairy menace within one's home, garden, or countryside ambles. It's told through the persona of Reginald Bakeley, a very proper British gentleman who enjoys a properly cooked leg of leprechaun and milk straight from the teat of a fae cow. He breaks it down into techniques, worst case scenarios, and sprinkles throughout stories of his own encounters--and through those, you get a greater sense of the "author." It's amusing, albeit quite dark. The ending even includes addresses for shops in Britain where one can find appropriate supplies, just as you'd find in a real handbook of this sort. As a writer, I can see this book as an inspiration in my own writing about fairy kind. I also know I want to lend this bookt o my mom, because I'm sure she'll get a kick out of it.

    Book preview

    Goblinproofing One's Chicken Coop - Reginald Bakeley

    For Hearth & Home

    FIRST PRINCIPLES OF FAERIE

    The Pernicious Pervasiveness of Faerie • The Brownie: A Misunderstood Fairy • Its Ambitions • The Boggart • Finding Its Lair and Motives • Methods of Routing • A Sample Letter • Maelstrom

    SEEN FROM THE OUTSIDE , the life of a dashing country gentleman such as myself must look like an endless parade of pleasure. Whilst I'll admit that this observation is fundamentally true, there isn't a single activity—no pheasant shoot, no cricket match, no afternoon of riverbank angling—that is not saturated with potential interference from that most ancient and insufferable people, the fairies. Perhaps the most unsettling quality of these so-called goodpeople is how they have insinuated themselves into every aspect of daily life. Far from being content to contain their caperings to the sylvan grove, nor to halt their march at the front gate or flower bed, these bogeys of childhood nightmare and adult paranoia are to be found nearly anywhere one might cast a glance. In my own life, the fairies and their mischievous pranks have caused me no end of trouble, scaring off my entire household staff, souring many of my closest friendships, and exacting unwanted expense and worry until all I'm left with are a few tattered scraps of sanity. These I raise as war banner against the fey. I beseech you to rally beside me.

    Of all the innumerable types of fairies, the one most commonly encountered, yet also the most commonly misunderstood, is the brownie. Here is a nocturnal fairy helper who stands no taller than the spout of one's teapot, yet is able to single-handedly carry out an astonishing number of household tasks. Renowned historically for its knack for churning butter and grinding wheat into flour, the modern brownie has mastered a repertoire revolving around pressed laundry and freshly brewed cups of tea. In exchange for its labour, it might skim a dram of milk from the bottle or gnaw the occasional simple crust of bread.

    It sounds pleasant enough, having one of these magnificently industrious creatures scampering about, but the household harbouring a brownie would do better to consider itself not blessed but beset.

    I say beset because in truth the brownie is nothing but a ruthless social climber. In the mists of antiquity, brownies were simple spirits of the earth. Yet as civilisation grew, these ambitious fairies hitched a ride, haunting hearthstones and lurking in linen baskets, biding their time until they themselves could have proper houses of their own. Now these jealous creatures live in a limbo-land between the Fairy Kingdom and our own world, residents of both places but full citizens of neither. By serving us endless cups of tea and pressing our clothes into immaculate crispness, they hope to ingratiate themselves upon us. They hope to become, in a word, men.

    This is a preposterous state of affairs.

    Even though the brownies are ignorant of their rightful place, I could almost be persuaded to adopt them into the fold; they're that fantastically useful. What stays my heart, though, is the brownie's fatal flaw—bitterness. Eons of toil have built up a terrible supply of enmity in them, and this much rage, condensed into the brownie's tiny frame, is little more than a powder keg, one sporting the shortest of fuses. The brownie is a learned scholar of its own twisted version of etiquette, and the slightest affront to its sensibilities can send it into a murderous rage, twisting its form into that of the monstrous boggart, as destructive as the brownie is helpful. Whilst a home hosting a brownie lodger may be the picture of comfort and peace, the coming of the boggart is the undoing of all of this and is as disquieting as a herd of wild boars let loose in the parlour.

    So should you awaken one morning to discover an unexplained cup of impeccably brewed tea atop your kitchen counter or slide open your dresser drawer to find a stack of perfectly ironed handkerchiefs, rejoice not. Instead, I urge you to commence with the following sequence of proven countermeasures. The brownie depends upon your gratitude, and the more of its ingratiating favours you allow yourself, the more difficult it will be to rid your home of the sycophantic squatter, who will inevitably transform and throw into turmoil all you have worked so hard to achieve.

    Firstly, you must locate precisely where in your household the brownie has set up residence. Brownies are at the bottom of the barrel figuratively and quite often literally. Upturn your entire home until you find its hidey-hole. Open all the kitchen cabinets and pull out their contents, especially from seldom-used cupboards. Worry not about upsetting the brownie in his lair. If he hears you coming, he will flee in modesty and shame, hoping that you will overlook his home.

    The purpose of this search is not to catch the brownie but rather to see exactly what his aspirations are. A miniature dormitory set up in the back of a cupboard may be recognised by a doll's house bed and tiny grass mat arranged in mock domesticity by the brownie. Once you find them, look more closely. What you are after are details. A framed Queen's-head postage stamp or a coronation tea cup now employed as a bathtub indicates you've got a miniscule royalist in your midst. A preserved dragonfly or a stuffed shrew shows up the work of a budding naturalist. Quickly take a series of mental notes and be careful not to disturb anything you chance upon. You wish only to observe and depart, before the brownie musters the courage to return and sees what you're up

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