I was escorted out of the cave at dawn yesterday with a leather bag over my head. After several hours of disorientating movement, it was finally removed and I was horrified to see two things.

First, the leather bag was in fact the scrotal pouch of the monster escorting me. The smell is still burning my sinuses.

Second, I had been led to the lecture theatre of a school and there were hundreds of Year 7 and 8 students in front of me, waiting for me to say something. Possibly waiting for me to explain why I’d turned up holding the hand of a monster and wearing a giant leather scrotal pouch over my head.

It all turned out OK. (Except for the fact that I’m now back in the cave.)

Princethorpe College was most welcoming, and the students came up with some brilliant story ideas, including one that involved the main character being eaten by a zebra.

It struck me that a zebra is a good choice for a villain, and that perhaps in some contexts, a zebra is a monster. In fact, there are loads of animals that were probably thought of as monsters when they were first encountered.

Can you imagine if you’re the first human to see a rhino? Or an elephant?

So I’m now considering whether these monsters that surround us are in fact nothing more sinister than the rhinos and elephants of the future.

Some day, somewhere, someone will be wondering who the first people to see these beasts were. Well, it’s probably us. A bunch of humble, starved and stinking authors.

Such a privilege.

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Elephants, Joe Craig, Rhinos, Schools, scrotal pouch, Zebras