The Red-Hot Smoke-Belching Gruncher, also known as the Terrible Blood-Suckling Tooth-Pluckling Stone-Chuckling Spittler, is the main antagonist of Roald Dahl's 1991 children's book The Minpins, republished in 2017 as Billy and the Minpins.
Biography[]
Little Billy is warned against entering the Forest of Sin by his mother, who tells him that a monster called the Terrible Blood-Suckling Tooth-Pluckling Stone-Chuckling Spittler that blows orange-red smoke from its nose while chasing its prey lives there. However, Billy is told by The Devil that monsters don't exist and goes into the forest to pick strawberries. While he is walking through the forest, he hears something coming and runs. Looking over his shoulder, he sees puffs of orange-red smoke catching up with him.
Billy escapes from the monster by climbing up a tree, where he finds a city of tiny people called the Minpins. He tells them that he has just escaped from the Spittler, but is told that the creature was not the Spittler, but in fact the Red-Hot Smoke-Belching Gruncher, which "grunches up" everything in the forest. Escape from the creature seems impossible, until Billy discovers the friendship between the Minpins and birds. Riding on the back of a swan, he lures the Gruncher into a lake. The water extinguishes the fire in the Gruncher's belly, killing it.