Mammals

A dotted lion: do not sign here

I know two things about the horse,
And one of them is rather coarse.
— Naomi Royde Smith.

… milk’s a queer arrangement
— James Joyce (1882 – 1941), Finnegans Wake, 260.

The platypus egg,
Has a single leg,
On which it stands,
To save its hands.
— Duncan Bain (1944 – ), ‘The platypus egg’ in Self-reverenced Sentiences (n.p.).

In spite of his well-formed head and intelligent eyes, the kangaroo is in general a hideous beast. His back legs are out of proportion to his front paws, which he folds when upright so that they look like two stumps. He sits upon his enormous, strong tail, and when pursued runs upright, making huge bounds. When they are asleep, or walking slowly, the kangaroos lean on the whole last section of their tail and on their tibia, only using their feet to spring with. They look as if they have been mutilated.
— Oscar Comettant, In the Land of Kangaroos and Gold Mines, translated by Judith Armstrong. Adelaide: Rigby, 1980, originally published as Au Pays des Kangourous et des Mines d’or. Paris: Librairie Fischbacher, 1890, 77.

A kangaroo or wallaby stew
Is nicer than it sounds.
Be sure your roo is nice and new,
And not yet out of bounds.

Duncan Bain (1944 – ) Gastromania Australiana, canto XXVII (unpublished ms)

On the bat’s back I do fly,
After summer merrily:
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
— William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), The Tempest, V, i, 88.

Bats at play taunt us with ‘guess how many’,
And music sounds far off, tempered by the sea.
— Robert Graves (1895 – 1985), ‘Above the Edge of Doom’, Selected Poems, 148.

The Camel

The camel has a hare-lip
And a back that is bimodal
And a very nasty temper
Because he cannot yodel.

And he hates to be confused with
The one-hump dromedary.
Whose Australian distribution
Is from Broome to Bomaderry
— Duncan Bain (1944 – ), ‘The camels are coming’, from Marching to the hump of a different bluey, Breek-Anathema Press, 1986.

He went back through the Wet Wild Woods, waving his wild tail, and walking by his wild lone. But he never told anybody.
— Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936), The Cat That Walked by Himself.

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