Everything you want to know about...
Tots!
General Information:
Pronunciation: Like a tater tot!
Plural: Tots
Baby Tot: Bulb
Metamorphosis: Moppets
Group of Tots: Mischief
(Example: A mischief of tots.)
General Information:
Ew … tots. This pest species is well known far and wide wherever there are wyngrew settlements. These tiny vermin are naturally found in small burrows out in the wild, but are nowadays much more commonly found in derelict or abandoned buildings.
Tots are a very unwelcome intruder in homes, and generally hated for their intrusive nature. It's considered unlucky and unsanitary to keep one as a pet, and feeding them will result in them growing large and even more of a pain to deal with.
Habitat & Adaptability
Most tots can exist in the wild eating moldy food, rotting carcasses, beebs, beeb seeds, dead flowers, rotting bark, and fungus (whatever no one else wants to eat). These tots usually remain on the smaller size, with very few of them ever progressing to the moppet stage. Their skin resembles their environment as well, so wild tots are often colors of washed out greys and greens.
However, tots that have made their way into farm buildings, feed stores, and abandoned buildings tend to grow larger than their wild cousins. They also take on the coloration of their environment over a few generations, quickly coming to match the walls, flooring, and furniture. This can lead to some very unique looking tots, especially on ones that live in furnished abandoned buildings.
Tots prefer getting into wyngro food pantries when they can, nibbling into anything not tightly sealed. They will however, make due with rotten wood, mold, fungus, even cloth if they can’t get into food.
They make their nests in the walls of buildings, gnawing little pathways for themselves in completely abandoned buildings. When tots try to do this in more inhabited spaces, the grinding and scratching noises of their nesting behavior in the night usually leads to the local wyngrew getting an exterminator immediately.
The Life of a Tot
The majority of the tots you’ll find in your everyday inspections are tiny things no bigger than a bug. You’ll be hard pressed to notice them skittering about behind your cabinets. At this size, they’re free to comfortably fit into any nook and cranny in a building in order to best hide. They’re also incredibly flexible, able to squish into places you wouldn’t think possible.
Most tots never grow much larger than that in their lifetime, busy scurrying around avoiding predators, and getting by on scrapes during their short lifespan. A tot is an interesting creature in that it grows larger the more it’s fed. They are social critters, often stealing food for their king and queen, so most will stay the same size, even if they happen upon larger stashes of food. A tot’s job is to find food and take it back to the nest, so it may be distributed evenly by their leaders. However, if a wyngro starts offering food to a tot, and the tot becomes less shy around them, it won’t say no to extra helpings...
Metamorphosis: Tots vs. Moppets:
The transformation of a tot into a moppet happens much like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. Once a tot has eaten enough, they enter a “pod” stage. Curling up their spherical body, they eventually emerging as a four legged, horned “moppet”.
About half the size of a wyngling, moppets are far less skittish and flighty than their tot form, especially if they were fed by a wyngro. These “evolved pests” are much more confident going after any stray bits of food and showing themselves to wyngrew. Their boisterous, headstrong temperaments often lead to furniture toppling and rotten walls and floorboards being busted through. They are garbage disposals and will devour anything they can fit down their gullet.
Wild moppets usually only exist in pairs, and never leave the nest. Instead, they send their loyal tots in to collect food to feed their lead moppet breeding pair. The “King and Queen” moppets are responsible for breeding and eating, and not much else. If another tot who is not the king or queen transforms into a moppet, it’s exiled from the nest and killed if it tries to come back. So wyngrew who overfeed a wild tot will often result in it losing its home or dying.
Social views on tots and keeping them as pets
Many wynglings are known throughout the world to find a little friend in their walls they can’t help but feed. Although soon enough, the little tot grows so big that it can’t fit into the walls anymore! It will also often get a craving for better and better foods, scavenging the place recklessly as it grows bigger and bigger. Trying to cage it will often result in it escaping due to its flexible exoskeleton and ability to eat through most cages. This often results in places getting ransacked or otherwise destroyed until the residents can quickly find and dispose of the pest.
This is why they are considered unwanted animals that you should never indulge by giving food to.
Although there are some very dedicated tot lovers out there, it’s extremely frowned upon. Some wyngrew claim they can make great companions, although the majority of society shuns the idea of them as pets.
How to obtain a Tot!
To find a tot, your wyngro will have to take some time living among them before potentially spotting one sneaking scraps in their rooms! “But where could my wyngro do that,” you ask?
There’s tell of some odd creaks and sounds in one of the most recently refurbished buildings in Wynsiph: The Cranny!
[Click here to find out more about the Cranny!]
While a tot likely won’t be extremely easy to find (Reed’s hard at work trying to de-pest any nests he finds in the building), if you stay there long enough and get a large enough room, one may show up (Chewing on a piece of your wardrobe or begging for food, most likely)!
Reed will likely try to get rid of your tot if he sees it around, so shhhh, you’ll need to be sneaky like a tot itself! And if it grows into a moppet, it’ll be too big to hide. You’d best get out of the Cranny and find lodging elsewhere once that happens (or sneak around the stinky cranniger)!
So how do I get one??
Upgrade your wyngro’s room to a Sun Room in the Cranny, and one might show up!
Compatibility with other animals and pets:
Tots will eat anything. And we mean anything. While they aren’t entirely aggressive or able to attack and kill, if they consider something food, they will attempt to eat it whole. This is mostly a problem with beeb spuds, as the defenseless plant-like creature is only viewed as a mobile snack and nothing else. A tot / moppet does not seem to be able to comprehend the living status of a beeb, and many owners will come home to find a tot has wriggled out of its cage and eaten the family beebs. Even tykes can be vulnerable to a moppet.
A tot will also attempt to snack on bugs or small critter eggs if given the chance, but larger pets such as runeboos, wibbles and coatala are easily able to defend themselves and scare away any curious tots or moppets. Coatala in particular are naturally adept to hunting tots, so you might want to keep your coat away from one if you do venture into mixing those two!
Overall, they generally just do not mix well with other animals.