It’s red and green
and in between
its spots are sometimes yellow.
Its head is red
its feet instead
are something much more mellow.
Its beak is white
except at night
when some of it is dotted.
It’s fair to say
that anyway
it’s rarely ever spotted.
Clearly a part two to last week’s ‘It’ and just as much of a ‘children’s’ rhyme. My three-year olds don’t get the joke, but they still think it is funny – and that will definitely do…
Continuing the rather more fanciful little spate of zoo poems aimed more directly at children.
This thing is like two balls of string
With half a horse between.
Its head is like a cream éclair;
Its feet like butter beans.
A tail of green, a mane of blue,
With spots along its back –
A cheerful disposition
Although its mood is black.
It could be `He’, it could be `She’,
It could be `Them’ or `They’
(I think it knows the answer
But is not inclined to say).
Its eyes are green, like tangerines,
It hasn’t any hair.
It’s really very common
Although extremely rare.
In fact, I’ve never seen one,
I promise you, it’s true,
And if you stay awake all night
You’ll never see one too!
Q. What is it?
A. I haven’t the faintest idea.
I’ve always written ‘children’s poems’ (even when I’m trying to do otherwise, my output seldom rises above the infantile). The absence of any call for logic is incredibly refreshing and saves hours of time in Wikipedia research. Spike Milligan had the greatest gift of writing for the child in all adults. It is something to which we should all aspire…
A ptarmigan is a bigger partridge
(Though hunters use the same size cartridge)
A little larger than a grouse,
Substantially smaller than a house.
Its fate is often Christmas fare –
It tastes a little like a hare.
Ptarmigans come with a silent ‘P’,
Like toddlers swimming in the sea.
The Ptarmigan is classed as a ‘game bird’ e.g. it has obviously been placed on earth with the simple function of giving the ruling classes something to point their guns at when they’re not starting wars. It is the ultimate arrogance of man that everything else on this planet has been placed here solely for our benefit and such things that clearly do not fit this criteria, probably need to be eradicated. Weirdly, the creatures we protect the best are those that we eat.
N.B. the bird was originally known by its Gaelic name ‘Tàrmachan’ until a man called Robert Sibbald (Psibbald?) thought that it would look far more classy if it appeared to have a genus name of Greek origin, so he stuck a silent ‘p’ at the front. I’ve always been intrigued by silent letters. How did they get there? I know (that is, I have been told, and I am trusting enough to believe) that some of them were originally pronounced – e.g. both the ‘k’ and the ‘g’ in the word ‘knight’ were originally spoken – but I cannot begin to imagine how ‘igh’ ended up in so many words. Some kind of lexicographical aberration. I’m sure the Greeks would have a word for it…
The poison dart frog has a many-hued coat
That you really wouldn’t want to have stuck in your throat
It has always puzzled me why a tiny little frog should contain enough poison to kill ten fully grown adult humans. What on earth is nature trying to protect them against? A dinner party? Ten French people willing to munch five to a leg? I understand in nature that bright colours warn of toxicity, so why aren’t butterflies weaponised? Why do Black Widow Spiders carry enough venom to kill a human, when all they need to see off is a fly? What’s more, if you’re a spider a spider who has just killed a fly with sufficient venom to bring down a human, how do you then eat it without suffering the consequences? How did nature choose the venomous? Why did she miss politicians? Thank God she did…
BTW in case you ever wondered, a frog in the throat is a simple literal allusion to the fact that you sound croaky.
P.S. I do understand the difference between poisonous and venomous – although I’m not convinced that the frog does.
Who’d want to be a chick or mouse
Within the darkened reptile house
Where neither rat, nor slug, nor louse
Is born with greater cause to grouse.
Yes, cows and sheep share common fate
But here’s the truth I must relate
That neither beast, when comes the date,
Goes live onto the dinner plate.
There is nothing in this world quite as disturbing as seeing chicks hopping around the terrariums in the reptile house, blithely unaware (I hope) that they are there just for one reason, to be eaten. They are alive only because the snakes will not take dead prey: they need to see it move. Keep still little chicken: don’t twitch little mouse! Sooner or later the snake will sleep. The best thing about going live to the dinner plate is that you might yet have the chance to hop off it.
Of all of the things in the zoo you might find
That the woodworm are probably best left behind;
I suppose, in their way, they are fairly benign,
But there’s just this one thing that has stuck in my mind.
In biblical times, when the skies all turned dark
And all of Earth’s creatures lined up in the park –
At least forty days ‘til they could disembark –
What stopped the woodworm from eating the Ark?
It has always puzzled me, this Ark business. What actually stopped the hunters from eating the hunted? I wonder if everything was given its own little pen? That is quite a construction feat. “Right, so let me just get this straight Noah. You want a boat that’s big enough to hold two of all of the world’s creatures and you want them all to have separate little compartments. I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what are you doing about the, er, toilet arrangements?” Also, I wonder, what were the carnivores fed on? Was there, perhaps, a second boat, marked ‘Food’, full of all the animals that Noah didn’t really want to save? If that’s the case, why weren’t the rats on it?
Forty days and forty nights is a long time to be trapped in a tiny cabin with a member of the opposite sex and nothing much to do: “Oh come on, we might not make it you know. There are no guarantees. Besides, what could possibly go wrong? Precautions? Of course…” I admit that my knowledge of boats is fairly limited, but I can’t help but think that if all of the large mammals decided to get it on at the same time the journey might well become a little uncomfortable for the humans on board. According to the Bible there were eight humans on board – why we got such preferential treatment I do not know – but I imagine that if the humans, too, had their own little cabins, life may have become a little fraught after forty days: “Oh come on, we might not make it you know. Well yes, I have seen the mess outside and no, of course I can’t expect you to feel at all sensual with that smell, but I don’t know what I can possibly do about it. Yes, I have opened the windows. No, I don’t know why the ship is so rocky when the sea is smooth. Look, can’t we just rejoice that we are two of only four couples left alive? Well, that’s a little harsh, I must say… You know how much I hate being compared to my brother, particularly in that way…”
As the floods slowly subsided, the Ark landed on mount Ararat, which, I imagine, would have annoyed the heck out of some of the human cargo as it was so far away from all of the ‘sights’ and, while I imagine the positioning was fine for, let’s say, the mountain goats, I can’t help but wonder how the elephants, the rhinos and the hippos went about finding their way down. Especially since Noah’s family, by then, would have been very hungry and elephants are a very big meal…
There’s seldom a sight that’s more sad to be found
Than a bored polar bear walking round and around:
In the ice of the Arctic, the most fearsome sight,
In the mud of a summer it’s not even white.
A hunter whose power’s respected by all,
Is trapped in a pen with a pond and a ball.
This mightiest hunter in mild summer’s rain
On an iceberg of concrete, going slowly insane.
I’m sure that zoos are not like this now, but many, many years ago, as a child, I was taken to one – long since closed down – and traipsed around the tiny cages full of magnificent creatures with nothing close to enough space and nothing with which to pass the time. Most of them simply paced backwards and forwards, giving every impression that they were fully aware that, in these conditions, life for them would be mercifully short. I was very young and my eyes were not open to these horrors until I approached a pen which contained a single polar bear. The bear in the picture on the wall was a magnificent beast; a pure white knot of muscle and teeth – the world’s largest terrestrial carnivore – power and savage beauty perfectly aligned. The bear in the compound – a concrete hollow, clearly designed to hold a large amount of water, but containing little more than a bathful at the base of its deepest point, upon which bobbed something that looked suspiciously like a child’s beachball – was thin to the point of emaciation with the yellow/light brown fur that I now know comes with age. From the base of the basin that was clearly intended to be filled with water rose a concrete iceberg to which the animal was clearly expected to swim in order to rest. Unfortunately with the pool drained of water the bear, as tall as he was, would have needed ropes and crampons to reach it. So, head bowed, it just walked round and around its base. Round and around, round and around, round and around… it was one of the saddest sights I have ever seen and I’m not certain that I have ever fully gotten over it. I understand that polar bears are one of the few creatures that will actively hunt a human – I can’t say that I blame them…
Elephants never forget,
From January through to December,
But I’m happy to bet,
Although with regret,
There is nothing they need to remember.
The perils of a pampered zoo life. You don’t need to remember how to cross half a continent in order to find a dry-season water hole when there’s someone to turn a hose on you every day. Maybe you just need to remember that this is not quite as it should be – and wait for the zoo keeper to leave the gate open…
There was an old lady from Hull
Who waved her red pants at a bull
She did it for kicks –
She was wetting her knick’s –
But the beast found it terribly dull.
I do love a limerick. Maybe I should use them more…
There was a young girl from Penzance
Who found she had ants in her pants.
Her humour quite faded
When the damn things invaded
And it certainly altered her stance.
Or maybe I shouldn’t…
Consider now the two-toed sloth,
Gamely hanging on with both
His sharpened claws onto a tree,
Whilst envying the sloths with three.
It struck me that the last couple of rhymes – although undoubtedly nonsense – have drifted away somewhat from the original short and sharp, in and out, ethos of the earlier zoo rhymes, so this is intended as something of a return. Truth is, it is impossible not to love a sloth with their big smiley faces – even though they are, apparently, covered in fleas, ticks and even moss. They can’t scratch them off can they? It’s so easy to lose your grip when you’ve only got two toes…
Getting On 