Listing to Port

1. Seretse’s chameleon. Have you ever seen a Seretse’s chameleon? No? Research shows that at least 78.3% of rooms in non-Arctic regions harbour at least one. Unlike normal chameleons, Seretse’s chemeleon can change shape and texture as well as colour to resemble nearby objects. If you have ever found a small object to be oddly non-functional at one use but fully operational later on, you may have been using a Seretse’s chameleon. They are also commonly implicated in situations where objects are confusingly not where you left them last.
2. Mrs. Ursula Flores, an Ecuadorean spy who started out as a double agent, rapidly became a triple agent and subsequently became an multiple agent of such a high degree that a new diplomo-mathematical notation had to be invented to describe her. Mrs. Flores once spent fifteen months as a hatstand in the pursuit of a particularly sensitive piece of information. One of her signature moves is to disguise herself as a disguise, enabling her to spy on other spies with impunity. For example, she can do an extremely convincing imitation of a large overcoat. Her collection of fake beards with microphones in is particularly admired by those who like that sort of thing.
3. Captain Beard. Captain Beard, who is emphatically one of those people who likes that sort of thing, is said to have studied under Mrs. Flores during her days as a chandelier in the Dominican Republic. He is said to be the first to have applied the diguisory arts to piracy, primarily by costuming himself as articles of treasure and then counter-robbing those who come to loot him. Captain beard can sometimes be distinguished by his bread. Do not loot treasure that has a beard. It will not end well.
4. The Bananas. The Bananas (not to be confused with bananas) are an alien race who have chosen to use the closest available Earth-vocalisation to their own name for themselves as their name on this planet. They are approximately 5 millimetres tall and usually travel in saucer-type ships approximately resembling pizza bases. After an initial Earth reconnaissance period, they decided to use this resemblance to aid them in infiltrating the planet’s cities. Banana ships are therefore frequently topped with cheese and pepperoni and sent to collect information from restaurant patrons. If you have ever had trouble ordering a pizza from a pizza delivery emporium, it may be that you unwittingly discovered a secret Banana base. Interestingly, Banana ships are cloaked on the underside so that humans looking up cannot see them passing overhead. However, it is sometimes possible to view what appear to be flying pizzas from above making their way between assignments if you are viewing a city from a tall building or an aeroplane.
5. Professor Grace Wu. Professor Wu is an expert in psychology whose research on human attention led to her devising a novel methodology for winning at hide and seek. Instead of hiding herself, Professor Wu arranges objects and people in her general vicinity such that something else nearby is always more noticeable. After more than three hundred straight wins in the World Hide and Seek League, Professor Wu was fired from her academic job for frivolity. In retaliation, she hid her entire university, leading to a 25% drop in admissions. Professor Wu has not been found since 1985, but is probably somewhere.
6. The hermit turtle. The world’s smallest turtle species, the hermit turtle does not have its own shell but instead uses everyday objects as shells and hiding places. It is most notable for hollowing out the insides of chocolates and hiding inside them. However, it finds the insides of chocolate boxes boring and usually wanders off before it finds itself in danger of being eaten. This is why the chocolates keep disappearing.