Meep!

The following is an extract from the BBC Doctor Who novel, Placebo Effect by Gary Russell, and concerns a creature named a Meep which made me smile :)

Kyle reached out and rested his hand on Sam's shoulder. She was eyeing a frankly bizarre spherical creature made, it seemed, entirely of silky white fur, tiny pink feet poking out from its lower regions. Two spindly pink hands fiddled nervously with a big red ball, and it had a smaller spherical head, with long ears, a snubbed nose and huge almond ears.

'It's a Meep. They're not as innocent or gullible as they seem' he told her. Kyle smiled - when he had been a young boy, he'd had a cuddly Meep to sleep with each night, but when the Meeps found out that some cultures saw them as little more than toys, a diplomatic request was made to the Federation and subsequent lines of the stuffed toys were discontinued. Kyle wondered if his Meep was still in his mother's attic back home on Mars.

'For many years,' he said, 'they used their ability to make people see them as little more than a soft toy to cheat in negotiations and such like. They're actually very cunning and have an unpleasant past based around conquest and colonization. Thankfully they are now one of the more peaceful federation members, but are still very competitive in the Games. I'm up against one in the Discus.'