"It's about fifty or sixty feet high, and it only eats metal."
—Hogarth Hughes, The Iron Giant
He found gates in front of him. Said gates appeared to be locked. They were made of that strange dark crunchy candy called "iron". A few bites later and the gates weren't locked any more! Wonderful! He wasn't sure if he liked the paint coating, it was a decent lead pigment vintage, but a bit heady for his tastes.
[Spike] shrugged and was making his way to the kitchen before he froze. "Ah, you won't die from a little rubidium poisoning, right? I've been cooking in these pots and pans with a lot of heavy and alkaline metals lately; can't have dessert all the time. Not for more than a week straight, anyway..."
—Sharing the Night, Chapter 19
It feeds on metal filings suspended in the water, sieving flecks of precious ore through magnetic baleen.
