Word of the Day: Menagerie (me naj’ er e) “A collection of wild or strange animals kept in cages or enclosures for exhibition.”
I was fortunate to grow up with quite an array of animal friends. We had the usual dogs and cats, of course, but we also had the infamous chicken herd that I told you about in an earlier blog, ducks, a goose, the horses, and an ornery goat. Virtually all the animals were named, which is probably not the wisest approach if you ever have plans of eating them or their offspring. My sister recently reminded me of the time my Dad wanted to get a calf with the idea of raising it and then butchering it for the freezer. I can only recall my Mother ever using the F-bomb twice in all the years I knew her. This was one of the two occasions. My Mother firmly replied, “F-bomb no! We’ll name it and make it a pet, and no one will eat it!” Incidentally, the other occasion when she dropped an F-bomb on my sister’s and my shocked young ears, was going over a very scary jeep trail in Colorado with a rather precipitous drop off on the passenger side of the car.
If I might digress for a moment on the famous F-bomb word, that amazing, multi-functional word that can send even experienced news media personnel into an embarrassed tizzy, I learned a rather amazing bit of trivia about its origins many years ago. In a graduate school class in Old English, the forerunner of our modern English, I had to read the epic poem Beowulf in the original Old English. You may remember the tales of the Viking hero, Beowulf, and his encounters with the evil Grendel and his even more evil mother? If not, no great loss! With the passage of time I have forgotten much of the subtle linguistic nuances of the poem, but I never forgot that the famous F-bomb word is found in that poem, the earliest known citation of the word, and the meaning was much the same. It is quite a versatile word; it can be a noun, verb, adjective, or adverb, depending upon the occasion. So, if like me, you slip up and use the “word” from time to time, you can rest assured that you are following a long, if not honorable, tradition!
Back to the menagerie. As I noted, we had ducks, chickens, a goose named Suzy, and several little bantam chickens, little miniature versions of the big chickens. They all laid eggs, so we had normal white eggs, greenish duck eggs, huge goose eggs, and little tiny bantam eggs. At Easter, we had all sizes of eggs to dye and hide. Easter was the only time of the year that we actually bought a couple dozen eggs at the grocery store. Really fresh eggs are virtually impossible to peel when hard-boiled, so we needed some of the not so fresh ones from the store. I learned that scrambled goose egg is OK, but a bit more pungent than the usual chicken eggs. The little bantam eggs made cute little fried eggs which appealed to us as youngsters, somewhat mini sized for mini appetites. We often found double-yolked eggs, something one rarely finds in today’s store-bought eggs.
We even had one white hen by the name of Lucy who always came up on the back porch to announce loudly that she had presented us with her daily egg. She never laid her egg in the hen boxes with the rest of the chickens. She preferred the bushes by the back door. The matriarch of the ducks was a female Mallard by the name of Mommy. She and several generations of her offspring had the run of the yard. She would come when called and would fly into your outstretched arms for some ducky stroking of her sleek feathers. Suzy, our domestic goose, was the undisputed queen of the barnyard. The chickens and I all had a very healthy respect for a bite from that large beak!
The little bantam flock was ruled over by a feisty rooster by the name of Horace. I have no idea where we ever came up with that name! As one of the smallest members of our little menagerie, Horace suffered from the little man attitude, the Napoleon complex, and attacked anyone he could, flying at his unwitting victims with spurs out. Unfortunately, his favorite target was my little sister, probably because she screamed and ran in such a rewarding fashion whereas the rest of us were more much likely to swat him with a broom or a rake. After a number of such episodes, the decision came down from on high; Horace had to go. The penalty for Horace was to become Sunday dinner. Horace was duly roasted and served. My Mother, my Dad, and I all sort of gulped, looked at one another, and quickly lost our appetites. Suzanne, on the other hand, waved a little drumstick in the air and uttered what was to become a classic family quote, “Horace sure am good!” It reminds me of the line from the Bard, “Alas, poor ‘Horace,’ I knew him well.”
I have a feeling that the Horace episode may have contributed to my Mother’s reluctance even to consider raising a calf!
©2015, Black Dirt and Sunflowers
Do you know what a Judas goat is? Join me next week for the answer!
