Chapter 17

chapter seventeen Just because I want to go bestiary questing—well, that doesn't mean my buds are with me. They're totally focused on the brain-sucking whatever-it-is and they seem pretty content to ignore the bestiary and watch Alfred all day. But after nearly a week passes with no Shrieking, I convince Quint to pry himself free from his Alfred studying and slap together a few monster-hunting tools. Once June and Dirk get a load of the killer gadgets, they're on board with my craving for heroic questing...

仅仅因为我想去探索动物——嗯，这并不意味着我的朋友和我在一起。 他们完全专注于吸脑之类的东西，他们似乎很满足于忽视动物文学，整天看阿尔弗雷德。 但将近一个星期过去了，没有人尖叫，我说服昆特把自己从阿尔弗雷德的学习中解脱出来，拼凑出一些猎怪工具。 一旦琼和德克得到了大量的杀人工具，他们就会加入我对英雄任务的渴望……

The next week is a whirlwind! A total wind of whirl! Quint keeps building new monster-hunting-and-tracking devices while Dirk, June, and I head out there—on the front lines—documenting and cataloging these beasts. We should call ourselves the Beastie Questers. The Bestiary Questing Monster Busters. Totally lame. Totally love it.

接下来的一周是一阵旋风！完全是一阵旋风！昆特一直在制造新的怪物狩猎和追踪设备，而德克、琼和我则走在前线，记录和编目这些野兽。 我们应该自称为猎兽者。 《怪兽终结者》。 完全站不住脚的。非常喜欢。

Finding a monster, snapping a photo, watching it and documenting its behavior—you can do all that from a ways away. But getting the ESSENCE—a drop of sweat, a strand of hair—not so easy... We search houses and stores and offices. We open mailboxes and we rummage through garages— any place in Wakefield where there might be some as-yet-undiscovered species of beastie. We even return to the Old South Graveyard, where I recover one of the Hairy Eyeball Monster's quills. Each daily hunt unearths new creatures, both big and small. Literally...

找到一个怪物，拍一张照片，观察它，记录它的行为——你可以在很远的地方做所有的事情。 但要获得精华——一滴汗，一根头发——就不那么容易了…… 我们搜查房屋，商店和办公室。 我们打开邮箱，翻遍车库——在韦克菲尔德任何可能有一些尚未被发现的动物物种的地方。 我们甚至回到了老南墓地，在那里我找到了毛茸茸的眼球怪物的一支羽毛笔。 每天的捕猎都能发现大大小小的新生物。 字面上……

Some of the little guys are actually kind of adorable. We find a whole furry little family of cuteness balls. "Look at 'em!" June says, rubbing one. "They're so fluffy."

有些小家伙还挺可爱的。 我们找到了一群毛茸茸的可爱球。 “看他们！”琼揉着一只说。 “它们太蓬松了。”

Dirk immediately turns into a softy. "Let's take them home with us. They can be friends with Rover!" But as we learn a second later, cute does not necessarily equal friendly. The big monsters—the ones that are just straight-up, like, brutish behemoths—are tougher to deal with. Thankfully, Quint doesn't give us only tracking gadgets. He arms us.

德克立刻变成了一个软蛋。 “我们把它们带回家吧。 他们可以和罗孚做朋友！”但一秒钟后我们就知道，可爱并不一定等于友好。 那些大怪物——那些简直就是野兽般的庞然大物——更难对付。 谢天谢地，昆特给我们的不只是追踪设备。 他武装了我们。

Arms us to the teeth. I even manage to retrieve a T-shirt cannon from the high-school football supply closet. I'm kind of obsessed with T-shirt cannons. I went to a Boston Celtics game once, with an old foster family, and the only thing I remember was that their dancing girls blasted T-shirts up into the stands, like two hundred feet! Quint turns our T-shirt cannon into the Glue Thrower, Goo Slower—and it's big-time helpful when we encounter the big-bellied Blobbulous down by the 7-Eleven.

把我们武装到牙齿。我甚至从高中的足球用品柜里找到了一个t恤加农炮。 我对t恤大炮有点着迷。 我曾经和一个老寄养家庭一起去看波士顿凯尔特人队的比赛，我唯一记得的就是他们家的舞女把t恤喷到看台上，有两百英尺高！昆特把我们的t恤大炮变成了胶水喷射器，粘胶减慢器——当我们在7- 11便利店遇到大腹便便的Blobbulous时，这是非常有用的。