Sunday, September 14, 2008

Alpha through the Muse to Omega

In an article about archaeology The Economist of September 6th quoted a Dr. Jason Ur. Fortunately Dr. Ur is an anthropologist at Harvard rather than a surgeon. His name is pretty darn neat; but if he's a Chaldean who's into body building and sailing it's perfect.

I have to wonder. Is his wife a novelist? Is her name Jane? Do they have a son? Did they name him Abram? How many times has he suffered these sorts of weak japes?

And. . . a comment to a post below moved me to quote William Blake. That, in turn, awakened the muse of my poetic side; which you now have to suffer:

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright,
Please to come, and take a bite,
Of the deer, that deign to munch,
With scorn, my lily buds for lunch.

Rip their hides, with your sharp claws,
Crunch their bones, with your strong jaws,
Drag their corpses, home to your lair,
And feed them, to your kittens there.

Who can whine, about ravaged deer,
When they make, kitten chow sans peer?
Who can mourn, for a savaged fawn,
Whose haunches, nourish tiger spawn?

Tiger, tiger, burning bright,
I'd better stop, this making light,
Of mayhem, lest I rouse the ire,
Of neighbors, nieces and PETA choir.

Finally. . . On the way home from Villanova earlier today we saw a nicely shot up road sign along the expressway. It's true the shooter was probably using a mere pellet gun, because the sign wasn't shot through; but it warms my heart that there's still an outrageous scofflaw vandal out there keeping the world interesting.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, my! Could it be that a certain fawn gnoshed once too often upon someone's garden?

Shelter Island used to deal with the problem in a rather unusual (and silly) way. I believe the idea was to prevent the deer from completely stripping one side of the island bare; so, they would have something called the "running of the deer", in which they would drive all the deer through the town to the other end of the island (and like the running of the bulls, people would take to the streets and run in front of the deer). It would then take the rest of the season for the deer to make their way back to the starting point.

I tried to find the story, but I think the article's been pulled. At any rate, they no longer have it because of excessive injuries.

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Sully said...

I have a long running battle with the deer. Usually they leave daylillies alone; but this year they ate all the buds, and they've been eating at the new leaves. I have to be more reliable with the deer repellant spray.

Anonymous said...

I vote you poet laureate of Collegeville. All in favor?

Anonymous said...

Aye!

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