[Susan McLean]

I think if you were asked whether a bird or an insect is animal, vegetable, or mineral, you would go with "animal."

Susan

[Jerome Betts]

Susan, absolutely, but it's too high-level a categorisation for everyday use.

Roger, that's an interesting point about dictionaries not really helping. I looked at the OED2 and 1993 supplement on-line but the only entry that approaches relevance to possible colloquial usage is:

2. In common usage one of the lower animals: a brute or beast, as distinguished from man. (Often restricted by the uneducated to quadrupeds; amd familiarly applied especiallly to such as are used by man, as a horse, ass, or dog.
Rather a 19th century de haut en bas tone to that - wonder if it's been there since the start.

Maybe a corpus-based dictionary would throw some light. Or maybe there's a real gap and some field research is needed, unless one of the linguistics-savvy of Esphere can expand.

I'm sure, as you say, people think of birds as animals, but only in a very general sense in academic or scientific contexts. I think frogs, on the other hand, are more likely in everyday usage to 'count' as animals. Perhaps also reptiles with legs would stay longer under the 'animal' umbrella. Fish, no, though there are those 'walking' mud-skippers I suppose.

The phrase 'wild animals' also brings to my mind at least mammals, not even vultures, though again possibly crocodiles. Komodo dragons etc.

I shall continue to ponder. Meanwhile, back to resuscitation of a defunct cuckoo.

[Orwn Acra]

birds is animals. John, what a lovely poem

[John Whitworth]

Thank you, Orwn. I once wrote a 200 line poem in the Burns stanza which was published in a national newspaper. Ah what a genius I had in those days! Some good stuff for the Staggers here, don't you think?

[Lance Levens]

Fleeing Johnny

(The Flea answers John Donne)

Ok--let's get this straight. Your blood, her blood
in my blood? Can we say crowded, Johnny Boy?
And just forget the question of the good
and bad, that you've been treating her like a toy--

no, forget that. Let's talk hygiene.
Do you have any notion where this girl
slept just last week? I don't want to wax obscene
but just because you run across a pearl

you fancy doesn't mean you've got to reach
out and man handle it. What if she's come
from Madagascar where she lived on a beach,
with sailors and soldiers or some Papist bum?

Are you even listening to me? " Bite us," you asked me.
"her, then me, so I can write erotic verse."
I'm outta here, my friend. Screw posterity.
And don't ask the spinner. He'll cop your purse.

[George Simmers]

Crow answers Ted Hughes:

Poet stares.
Poet grins.
Poet slobbers.
You do, don’t you?

“Crow,” utters Poet with satisfaction,
“You’re doing the thing you do.”
As beak jabs through the dark fur
Into darker intestines.

Beneath a cliff of eyebrows
Poet's deep eyes glow.
Poet really likes the jabbing,
Or anything with spilt innards.

Poet never comes to see Crow nest-building,
Or having a laugh with the wife and kids.
It’s just the innards-jabbing gets Poet going.
Funny, that.

[Jerome Betts]

Ingenious, George. I wonder how many others realised the Hughes possibility. Meanwhile, assuming everyone was right about birds for this one I will hope the following is not cuculus repetitus.


Dear Wordsworth, really, no soft soap,
Your PR piece -great verse!
You called me 'blessed', ‘darling’, 'hope',
Not 'parasite', or worse.

Whose fault is it I build no nest
And don’t stuff grubs down gapes ?
It’s genes – like those your lines attest
Make poets more than apes.

So, glad you thought my voice a hit
In what you kindly wrote,
But these days far too few emit
That plangent double note.

I’m sure, dear William, deeply stirred,
You’d put Time in the dock
To know your cuckoo’s now most heard
As part of some damned clock!

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

Snake's reply

Yes, that was sensible.
Letting me drink first from my water-trough!
Imagine! Coming to fetch water in his pyjamas
And pretending to be humble. So, so humble!
Hypocrite! He wouldn’t even look me in the eye!
I must confess how I disliked him.
I saw him eying that log. And I thought,
Without that belt around your waist, mister,
you’d have difficulty thrashing a worm to death.
I think it did not hit me.
But I scarpered pretty quick.
And he seemed to me again like a sissy,
Like a sick old sissy without any balls,
Wishing he had some,
So he could save his little lady’s honour.
Honour? On her, more like.

[George Simmers]

A bird IS an animal, at least in the opinion of the New Statesman, which has given a nice little prize to my Crow. Lance Levens got an hon. mench for Donne's flea (which I actually thought a better effort than my own - but when was life ever fair?)