The World of Poo (Discworld 39.50)

‘Well, I’ve started a collection,’ he said breathlessly, ‘and Plain Old Humphrey said I could use his old shed for a museum, and he gave me a bucket and spade and a trowel for collecting. And I took Widdler to the park, but I forgot my bucket and we met a boy called Louis. He was collecting dog poo in a bucket for Sir Harry King and he said I could help him again tomorrow.’

‘He would be one of Sir Harry’s pureboys,’ interrupted Grand-mama. ‘It’s a very useful job. But what exactly are you collecting, Geoffrey?’

‘Oh, any poo at all,’ he said. ‘In fact I want to collect every sort of poo there is. Plain Old Humphrey says it can be very useful and it’s interesting and sometimes it can be lucky.’

‘Are you sure that’s what you want to do?’ asked Grand-mama. ‘Your cousin Robert collects stamps. I believe they are quite interesting and can sometimes be quite valuable.’

‘No, I think I’d rather collect poo,’ said Geoffrey without hesitation. ‘I don’t think anyone else in the world has a poo collection, so mine would be the first proper museum and I could charge people to come and see it.’6

Much to his surprise, his Grand-mama gave him a big, if rather strange smile. ‘You are a very original thinker, Geoffrey.’ She touched the pearl necklace strung around her neck. ‘Would it surprise you to learn that these very expensive pearls are the poo of oysters? Given your interesting predilection I shall think carefully about where would be the best places for us to visit while you are staying. Come and see me after breakfast tomorrow and I shall have a plan.’

1 Because mice are small they can squeeze in virtually anywhere and leave their poo around the house. However, they mostly take up residence in the kitchen and larder where food is stored and prepared. Mouse poo is about the same size and shape as a grain of rice but thankfully it’s much darker in colour so can be picked out, not just from carelessly stored rice, but also from bags of flour and other staples. Beware the short-sighted cook: not all the currants in the roly-poly pudding grew on a vine. And don’t ever eat black rice.

2 Hen eggs quite often have poo stuck to them as chickens are indifferent about where they poo. In the Agatean Empire the poo is carefully scraped off and turned into soup, but by and large it’s best to wash the poo off the egg just before you boil it, especially if, like some people, you use the same boiling water to make the tea.

3 The humble earthworm produces its own weight in poo every day. This amounts to about a gram, which might not seem much except that there are about 500 worms per square metre of earth. This means that over the course of a year, in one small flowerbed, they would produce over 180 kilos of poo. It is as well that the Howondaland elephant does not daily generate its own weight in poo or the whole world would quite soon be Howondaland. Worm poo is completely inoffensive and much prized by gardeners and you really wouldn’t know if you’d got it under your fingernails, as indeed most gardeners have. Some gardeners have it in their boots, too, especially when attempting that very tricky gardening manoeuvre known as the transmigration of soils.

4 By law a nasty boingggg must always be the last noise you hear when any humorous search is made in piles of junk. It’s the law; no one knows whose law it is but, nevertheless, it’s the law.

5 Cats are secretive animals and their poo is so offensive that even they don’t like the smell of it, and so they bury it. Cats also get terribly embarrassed if they know you are watching and will turn the other way.

Even witches, who can use most things in creating spells, draw the line at cat poo. The Ting-Tang-Bang cats of the Counterweight Continent are revered for the vicious nature of their poo, which is collected, carefully dried and then used to make fireworks; and with minute attention to the cats’ diet the most skilled practitioners can get you displays of vivid blue, which are notoriously hard to achieve in the field of feline pyrotechnics.

6 Sadly Geoffrey was wrong in assuming that his was the first poo museum on the Disc. In the Unseen University

there is a magnificent conundrum known as the Cabinet of Curiosities and no scholar has yet plumbed its limitless depths. It is believed to contain samples of poo from every living animal and insect in the multiverse including such exotic species as the phoenix, unicorn and quantum butterfly. However, scholars are confident that it lacks the poo of the rocking horse, which is thought to be rarer than anything known to humankind.

A VISIT TO THE DRAGON SANCTUARY

GEOFFREY WOKE UP excited. Today was the day that Emma, one of Grand-mama’s god-daughters, was going to take him to the dragon rescue centre and sanctuary. After breakfast, he put on his best jacket and stood in the hallway with Widdler, ready and waiting. Before long, his patience was rewarded when the bell rang. He opened the front door to a friendly and jolly girl who looked as if she ate hay and enjoyed a good run before breakfast.

‘Hello, Geoffrey. I’m Emma,’ she said in a booming voice. When he shook hands with her as he’d been taught to do, she gave him a grip he just knew would crack a walnut; he liked her immediately.

‘Now, Geoffrey,’ she continued, ‘your Grand-mama gave me five dollars so we could take a cab to Morphic Street. But it’s not far and if we walked instead we could buy some sweets on the way. What do you think?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Geoffrey enthusiastically, ‘I’d much prefer to walk. You never know what you might see.’

They set off along Nonesuch Street past some very grand houses and as Geoffrey was admiring them he saw what looked like two ugly stone animals perched on the edge of a roof.

‘What are those creatures doing up there?’ he asked Emma.

‘Oh, they’re just gargoyles,’ she said. ‘If you’ve got a very big house and a grand piano and a butler and a carriage with your name on it, the next thing is to hire a gargoyle to sit on the corner and make your house look even more important.’

‘But what do they do?’ asked Geoffrey.

‘Well, originally they would have lived on the tops of very old buildings like the Unseen University where they sat in the gutters and fed off what came through in the water. Now many of them are purely ornamental and have to have food left out. Some, I’m told, even allow themselves to be painted and made to hold up shields. They’re quite harmless unless you’re a pigeon; they hate pigeons.’

Geoffrey waved up at the gargoyles as they continued on their way and thought he got a wave back.

It was not long before they came to a bridge. Geoffrey was amazed at the houses and shops that lined both sides of its crowded carriageway. Some had small rooms sticking out over the river and as Geoffrey watched he saw something fall from one into the river with a splat.

He and Emma squeezed between two buildings and looked down on to the sluggish River Ankh as it crawled its way to the sea. ‘It’s a bit smelly,’ said Geoffrey, ‘and why are those people in the boats holding up umbrellas? It’s not rain— Oh, I see,’ he nodded, as another splash and splatter reached their ears and the river was further enriched in its passage under the busy bridge.1

‘Some people are too mean to pay Sir Harry King to collect their privy buckets and it just goes in the river,’ explained Emma, ‘which makes it very smelly and extremely unpleasant for anyone going under a bridge.’ She added, ‘I think they’re making a law about it.’

‘Does Sir Harry collect people poo as well as dog poo?’ asked Geoffrey.

‘Sir Harry collects everything; they don’t call him the King of the Golden River for nothing,’ she added. ‘Come along. Let’s go and buy those sweets.’