Duck-Billed Platypus

Found in abundant numbers throughout Europe, the duck-billed playpus is one of nature's most absurd creatures. Part duck, part stoat, part surrealist comedian, the platypus makes a loyal and constantly amusing companion, so long as you can overlook its bitterness at the cruel joke that nature has played on it. Despite hatching its young from eggs, the mother platypus feeds them with milk, normally having two pints delivered to the door every day for this purpose. The young platypus is called a platykitten.

Greed

See: Bankers

Hubris

See: Bankers

Toyota

Toyota is the name of Japan's largest manufacturer of toy otters - both clockwork and electric. They also do a line in toy seals, but when ex-CEO Hoshi Nakimari attempted to launch a line of toy cats he was ousted by angry shareholders who feared that the move to land-based creatures was a betrayal of all the company stood for. The company is currently enmeshed in litigation against a car manufacturer that has stolen its name.

Dead Sea

The Dead Sea is, in fact, a lake and is famous the world over for its unusual bouancy. This allows the many fishermen who live at its edges to go to sea in boats made of brick. As well as suppoting numerous species of fish, the Dead Sea is also home to a thirty foot monster, believed by many to be a distant relative of the Loch Ness monster.* 

*Activists now campaign against the use of the term 'monster' as it has negative connotations. They point out that humans might appear monstrous to the creature as such things are a matter of perception. The Activists are generally considered to be idiots.

Cat

The Cat is closely related to the otter and enjoys swimming in rivers and lakes, diving to catch fish and only coming onto land to nest and raise its young. Cats were worshipped in Medieval Europe until the time of Philip IV of France who decided that worshipping God was a better idea all round. Certainly, the cats were much happier for it although scholars are divided as to the impact on wider society.

Badger

The badger, a common sight in British towns and often kept as a pet by farmers, is so called because of its amusingly shaped genitals – badger is a contraction of 'bulbous tadger'. As such, badger meat is often served at the tables of rich Englishmen who wish to elegantly insult their male guests. The badger's preferred diet is the Atkins.

If you scan a badger at a supermarket checkout, you will discover that it costs £3.60

Rain

Just as the eskimos have many words for snow, the British have seventy-three words for rain. Sixty-seven of them imply a spurious connection to global warming. Interestingly, the Irish have eight hundred and seventy-two words for rain, making up 16% of the Irish language. They have no word for sunshine. 

Blackbird

The blackbird is the national bird of the Faroe Islands. It also forms the basis of the national dish – blackbird pie. The nation's affection for the little bird remains undimmed despite a recent rise in nose-peckings. The blackbird is actually a very dark shade of blue.

The Alphabet

The Alphabet was discovered by British cryptographers at Bletchley Park during World War Two in a tin of Alphabetti Spagetti. They immediately siezed upon this discovery and used it to spell their names, the name of their unit and the name of the country they were fighting. The technology was shared with the Americans and, in a more limited form with the Russians. The German and Japenese High Commands immediately set about trying to copy the Alphabet - German spies succeeded in stealing most of it in 1942, even inventing a letter of their own, the ß. Meanwhile the Japanese used up precious resources developing their own alphabet.  

Football

Football is a game played by grown men who kick a bag of wind about a field for a living, then think up ways of blaming the result on the referee, the pitch or the conjunction of the stars. The team that thins of the most creative excuse is awarded the crown of World Champion. England achieved this accolade in 1966, and have maintained a proud record of excuses ever since, although they are often pipped to the post in excuse shoot-outs by the Germans and the Portuguese. Football is sometime called soccer, because footballers wear long socks.

Peregrine Falcon

The peregrine falcon provided the inspiration for the 1970s comedy series The Fall and Rise of Reginald Peregrine after the writer David Nobbs heard an old Scottish folk story about a bird of prey that 

becomes fed up with its life flying faster than any other bird and chooses to abandon its family for a life on the ground. 

The lead role in the comedy hit was taken by Leonard Rossiter, who also starred in Raisin Dump, a documentary series about the EEC's long forgotten dried fruit mountain

.

Soap

Soap was invented by Mennonites in America in the 19^th Century who discovered that the wheat beer favoured by their shiftless young folk had the effect of turning dirt skin-coloured. It quickly spread around the world, except in France where it was resisted as an Anglo-Saxon attack on their distinctive culture, based as it was on smell. This led to rioting in 1968 when students confronted the police with chants of nous exigeons le savon and vous empestez, nous empestez, les puanteurs de pays entier! De Gaulle soon buckled and began issuing tubs of government issue soap free of charge.