Skills
While they are extremely diligent in using their surgical skills among themselves they are also careful to share them among the people around their homes, possibly in a bid to make sure that when the torch-bearing mob comes along to kill the latest freak of science the resident Igor will be spared. The tradition is that people helped by an Igor later allow it to have a "rummage around" for useful organs after they die. If the Igor is turned away from the house, no Igor will help that village again. The Igor clan motto is, "What goeth around, cometh around... or thtopth."
Beyond surgery, Igors have an advanced knowledge of what they call "bio-artificing" (a kind of genetic engineering which, on the Discworld, involves "very small stitches") and often create "pets" for themselves, such as dogs made from various dog breeds and a rabbit with human ears growing out of it. A hamster created by such methods apparently broke out of its cage and chewed off a man's leg before flying away. An Igor's expertise in human surgery also extends to the veterinary world; there is known to be one horse in Ankh-Morpork, owned by Hobson's livery stables (which employs an Igor), with a longitudinal seam extending the entire circumference of the animal, sewn together from the remains of a particularly nasty collision. It is advisable, when asking an Igor about his job, not to allow your imagination to follow his answer all the way. It is also hinted in Unseen Academicals that their knowledge goes beyond the biological, for instance they know the secret of creating gold.
They have a strange ability to be at your side (or just behind you) when you call them, and at a door before you knock. Their other ability, returning to a room unnoticed while having previously left through a door, is possibly a spoof of the common bloopers and mistakes in old horror movies. They also have a knack for making any door they open creak; Igors who take up long-term residence in a particular place will often cultivate these creaks via careful lack of oiling.
Read more about this topic: Igor (Discworld)
Famous quotes containing the word skills:
“In the middle years of childhood, it is more important to keep alive and glowing the interest in finding out and to support this interest with skills and techniques related to the process of finding out than to specify any particular piece of subject matter as inviolate.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“Juggling produces both practical and psychological benefits.... A woman’s involvement in one role can enhance her functioning in another. Being a wife can make it easier to work outside the home. Being a mother can facilitate the activities and foster the skills of the efficient wife or of the effective worker. And employment outside the home can contribute in substantial, practical ways to how one works within the home, as a spouse and as a parent.”
—Faye J. Crosby (20th century)
“I have great faith in ‘ordinary parents.’ Who has a child’s welfare more at heart than his ordinary parent? It’s been my experience that when parents are given the skills to be more helpful, not only are they able to use these skills, but they infuse them with a warmth and a style that is uniquely their own.”
—Haim Ginott (20th century)