Imps in the Study

I have just returned home from a ten day foray into southwestern Ontario, where I accompanied an American and a Canadian colleague to track down and relocate a rogue pack of hodags. Vicious creatures, really. Although they never grow much over knee-high, this pack was particularly troublesome for us. Agent Clive Quilligan, of the Magical Creature Records, Education, Enforcement, and Protection Service (MCREEPS)--the American equivalent of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures--was particularly informative regarding the unique challenges of North American field work, and I look forward to working with him in the future. Trooper Maxwell Weatherborough of the Canadian Ministry of Magic "hooked me up" (as they say here) with a reliable source of drinkable beer. Couldn't ask for two better chaps with which to round up dangerous creatures in the North American wilderness.

Upon my return, I found that the imps I "rescued" have begun to feel at home in their new environment. I arrived late in the morning by broom, under cover of my most powerful disillusionment charm of course, so I was surprised at first to hear such a ruckus coming from inside my study. Thinking there might be an intruder, I drew my wand and swept the house in deliberate fashion, clearing each room in turn. Finally I reached the study, only to find my three little blighters ransacking my son's desk. After a brief but heated battle, I left them to it and put the beer in the fridge.

The Imps Invade

I've settled into my new digs here--a fine bungalow in town. The Muggle neighbors are an eclectic bunch: a bachelor and his dog to one side, and elderly couple and their middle-aged son to the other, a tyre factory worker across the street, and a policewoman next door to him. Two houses down from her lives a retired cement finisher, and it was in his front garden where I first spotted the New World Imps.

At first glance, I wasn't sure they were imps at all, seeing as they were blue mottled with purple and black--nothing like the subdued browns of the Old World Imps back home. I quickly discerned that they were equally troublesome as those in Lancashire, though, for these found endless amusement in drifting the newly shoveled snow back onto the sidewalks, icing "doggie-doors" closed, deflating automobile tyres, and rampaging through the neighborhood late at night, thereby setting all the dogs for blocks around to barking hysterically. (Luckily, I was able to Memory Charm old Dan, the retired cement finisher, into believing they were bluejays.)

So you maybe wondering what possessed me to open the window that cold winter morning when three of the little blue buggers sat themselves on the sill, mournfully looking in. Trust me, if I knew, I'd tell you.