Baa Baa Wordsworth

 

 

 

….turning, saw, as one sees in a dream,

It was a Sheep had broke the moorland peace

With his sad cry, a creature who did seem

The blackest thing that ever wore a fleece

 

I walked towards him on the stony track

And, pausing for a while between two crags

I asked him,’Have you wool upon your back?’

Thus he bespake, ‘Enough to fill three bags.’

 

Most courteously, in measured tones he told

Who would receive each bag and where they dwelt;

And oft, now years has passed and I am old,

I recollect with joy that inky pelt.

 

 

To read more of this nursery rhyme as it might have been written by William Wordsworth, or Hickory Dickory Dock in the style of T S Eliot, seek out Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis by Wendy Cope ( ff Classics)

For elephant lovers

Pig power

Sweet and sour cane-toad

 

More amazing animal feats

Let’s hear it for pigeons

Pigeons successfully learned to discriminate color slides of paintings by Monet and Picasso.

Rossetti’s wombat

Sigrid Nunez: The Friend

The three quotes at the beginning of The Friend are a kind of triangulation, three lines drawn towards the point where the writer is to be found.  But where is she to be found? She doesn’t know that herself.

Things we didn’t know about Lemurs

(Lemurs) live in matriarchal troops, with an alpha female at their head. When ring-tailed lemurs are cold and frightened, or when they want to bond, they group together in a furry mass known as a lemur ball, forming a black and white sphere that ranges in size from a football to a bicycle wheel….

The Dictionary of Animal Languages: Heidi Sopinka

We meet Ivory Frame, the protagonist of Sopinka’s tale when she is aged ninety-two but still  receiving surprises from life. And what a life it’s been. Being at first passionate about painting she has devoted the greater part of her life to recording the languages of animals…before they all become extinct.