Animals

At first the poor ant-slurping aardvark

 Was seen as a bearish old hard ’vark,

But his greatness unfurled

Till he charmed the whole world

 And arrived on its A-lists as starred ’vark.

 The sloth’s a slow, cumbersome beast,

 Who exhibits no haste in the least,

But when hornet invasion

 Upsets the occasion,

 He streaks off like lightning well greased.

 Once a beaver worked wonders with wood,

 Building dams, like a good beaver should.

 Sadly, something he wouldn't do –

 In fact, that he couldn't do –

 Was swim, though he wished that he could.

The poor camel’s a grouse and a grump

 Who won’t gambol or gallop or jump,

For he’s always too troubled

By wetly bewobbled

 Warm water what waits in his hump.

There once was a little French chamois

 Who frolicked on rocks near his mamois.

His innocent fun

 Was soon wrecked by a gun,

 And he’s now washing cars in Miamois.

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This verse came second in the Washington Post’s 2005 Style Invitational, perhaps the world’s best limerick contest. It is my original take on the old chamois/mamois theme.

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A dainty demure little dinosaur

 Made daddyosaurus feel kinosaur.

He was pained that her romp

In that steamy old swamp

 Would now lead to the need of a gynosaur.

The monkey’s a cute cuddly fellow,

 Who’s mostly mild-mannered and mellow.

Just take, though, a grape

 From that mild, mellow ape,

 And he’ll slash you with fangs long and yellow.

 The baboon, the old red-bottom goon,

Is as mad as a coot in mid-June.

He’s grumblingly grumpy

 And cravenly jumpy –

 Shout b-boo ’n he’ll fall in a swoon.

The rude rabbit is ruled by a habit

 That rabbithood puts in a rabbit.

Without seeming to mind

 If it’s not rabbitkind,

 Mister rabbit will grab it and jab it.

 If you hassle a girl hippopotamess,

 She’ll leave you, for sure, innalottamess.

Please know, if you do,

You will know it’s of you

 That observers cry sadly, ‘Godwottamess!’

That unicorn’s famed for his horn

 And the truth that he never was born.

 Had he kind of existed,

He might have enlisted

 To clear the park’s litter-laced lawn.

 The ostrich has long limber legs,

 Or is otherwise fitted with pegs,

 But he couldn’t have neither,

For how would he either

 Climb onto or off his mate’s eggs?

Simba’s lord of his lions no more

Because Africa’s unwritten law

Forces leaders who’re tested

 To go when they’re bested.

 Simba left with a half-hearted boar.

 No, tactful was no pterodactyl.

Haphazardly hacking, he hacked till

 His offspring were fed,

After which nothing fled

 Till the time that he wouldn’t be back till.

The bill of the pelican relican

Hold more than his pelican belican.

People still see how welican

But not how the helican

Stock more than a pelican delican.

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With apologies to Dixon Lanier Merritt, whose famous limerick of 1910 first used the rhyming words belican and helican. Mine is the world’s first 8-elican pelican limerick.

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Do beware, I declare, the rhinoceros

 Whose temper is truly atroceros!

 So do not, for Pete’s sake,

Ever stupidly make

 An obstroperos ’noceros croceros!

An arrogant bird is the seagull;

As proud as the sky-soaring eagull.

You will see by the sea,

If you walk there with me,

It shit proudly on me and my beagull.

 While the eagle still swoops when he shrieks,

 And still banks to the max when he streaks,

 Because humans now fly,

He’s a little too shy

 To rehearse aerobatic techniques.

 The snake’s just a head with a tail,

  Showing parts neither female nor male.

I suspect that we vex it

When stooping to sex it

 By tactile techniques used for Braille.

 The elephant’s famed for his trunk,

 Which he raises to thwart the odd skunk,

 For his nostrils, you see,

Since they’re mobile, are free

 To be other than where the skunk stunk.

The poor shrew has a miniature trunk

 That it uses to scavenge for junk,

A pursuit most essential

When storms are torrential

 And everything edible’s sunk.

 The bat’s half a rat, with veined wings,

 So it flaps and it craps and it clings,

But, ashamed of half-sparrow

 Ancestral bone marrow,

 It won’t let us hear when it sings.

A pig cannot, like you, do without

 That snufflingly sensitive snout.

 You could, if you chose to,

 Search mud with your nose, too,

 But, goodness, you’d look like a lout!

Australia’s peaceful mom wombat

 Tries hard to avoid careless combat.

The best wombat mommies

 Just care for the wommies,

 And combat is left to the tombat.

I must place Himalaya’s chilled yeti

 On Africa’s baked Serengeti,

 A sweltering clime,

But the only fit rhyme

 For a yeti poetically petty.

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Carol June Hooker has expressed her heartfelt concerns about this verse:

If you placed a chilled yeti on baked Serengeti,
Then wouldn't the yeti get steamed?
Wouldn't chilblains erupt with a speed most abrupt,
And the nearest poor creatures get creamed?

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