Centipedes, ah centipedes, with more legs than blood veins, Not like the millipedes – they’re rounder, you’re flatter. Among the weeds are centipedes, articulated trains – So how can you walk without causing a clatter ? You gain two more segments each time that you shed – That’s four legs per moulting, with more moults ahead. So I don’t know, centipedes, quite how you succeed When the insects can make do with six feet per tread. Is it to lengthen your gut, or to strengthen Your grasp on the earth, causing limbs to accrue ? And if so, you sly lot, I’m wondering why not Have billipedes, or trillipedes, or squillipedes too ? Nat’ral selection, of course, has you firm in her grip – It’s legs verses food, and at some point your fortunes must slip – Though how many legs does it take for the balance to tip ?
Centipedes, ah plentipedes, with more legs than brains, Though more brains than millipedes, if far fewer pins – Bullet-headed batter-rams who plough through remains, They’re moving slow by gearing low, to help sync their shins. Silly slow millipedes, high in torque and low in speed – Faster though than rotting leaves, upon which they feed. You race them and beat them, you chase them and eat them – But how many, Centipede, of legs do you ready need ? Perhaps it’s your body that’s less planned than shoddy, And just goes on growing till one day you pop. You keep budding segments and each comes with legments, All far too far back-there behind you to stop. Centipedes, ah centipedes, you’re runners and dancers, You’re bolted together, you’re slaloming chancers – So rich in appendages, always – but so poor in answers.
Two wings for casing, And two wings for flying, Mouthparts for feeding, And feelers for prying, Six legs for crawling, And two eyes for peeping – Scuttling and swimming And buzzing and creeping. Hundreds of thousands Of species most fine, And all of them based on One winning design.
Little Miss Schneiders has always loved spiders: From miniscule monies to long-leggèd striders, From purse-webs to orb-webs, to nursery sheet-webs, From cobbled-up cobwebs to fussily-neat webs. With eight legs and eight eyes (unless they have six eyes) And just the right size to pose no sort of threat. She loves all the spiders, does Little Miss Schneiders, And thinks that tarantulas make a fine pet – Who needs a red setter when eight legs are better ? (Her parent won’t let her, but she’s hopeful yet.)
Little Miss Schneiders is smitten with spiders, From burrowing wolves to ballooners and gliders. But best of all, surely, is knowing how Britain’s Are pussies – as cute and as gentle as kittens. Imagine Australia ! What lurks inside her ? There’s trapdoor and funnelweb, huntsman and redback ! But not for Miss Schneiders, who’s safe to love spiders – For all of her widows are false, and not black.
Ev’ry September sees Little Miss Schneiders Go searching the skirting and combing the coving – For this is the season when spiders go roving, The scent-spinning ladies and amorous lads, All looking to hook-up as mammas and dads. From bath-tub and cellar to guinea-pig hutch, And under the pelmets there’s eggs by the clutch. They dance on the walls and they sprint ’cross the rugs For eight gorgeous eyes and for eight-leggèd hugs.
Little Miss Schneiders has always loved spiders – They’re bigger than beetles and faster than slugs !
“…all other flying creeping things, which have four feet, shall be an abomination unto you.”
– Leviticus 11: 23
Chow down on the damselflies, Munch upon their crop – Bite into their compound eyes Until you feel them pop. Scoff on moths and feast on ’wigs, Or ’skaters, ’skeeters, whirligigs – And aphids served up by the dish With ladybirds and silverfish.
Count the legs to know the score. If six apiece, our bugs are pure.
Chomp upon the wasp when ripe And pluck each silky wing, Chew upon its barley-stripe And suck its juicy sting. Scarabs sate the palate well, Just don’t forget to crack the shell – While maggots taste so sweet and young, When slowly melting on the tongue.
Count each foot and thigh and shin – When legs are six, we never sin.
But locusts and crickets All look like they’ve rickets With bandy gert hindlegs for springing around. And mantids, you’re saying Have forelimbs for praying. But all use all six when they creep on the ground. And fleas, if you please, walk the hexa-gait too – (At least, in the circus they do.)
So count each leg, each gnat and bee – For six is fit anatomy !
*****
But feast not on the mutants, The foul four-leggèd mutants ! Such creeping fowls thou shalt not eat, With legs above their feet.
Beware the peacock butterfly ! With four leg-legs and foreleg combs. Beware the mantidfly, they cry ! And drive these devils from our homes.
Then feast not on the spine that’s rimmed by six, With shoulders double-limbed. So count the struts in which they’re clad – Six legs good, four legs bad.
And I heard of some bats in New Zealand Who go on all-fours on the floor Their wings get tucked up, and each free hand Is def’nit’ly walked on, for sure !
So shout it out to congregations – None shall taste abominations ! Heresies thou shalt not eat With legs above their feet.
So gather, gather for the feast Of insects, great and small. They’re pure and kosher, ev’ry beast – Six-leggèd, one and all !
I have seen footage of a mantidfly use it’s forelimbs to help pull itself up a wall, but on the flat at least they seem to keep them folded up. The unrelated praying mantis does similar, but I think may use it’s forelimbs for locomotion a bit more often. But the real champions are the brush-footed butterlies (peacocks, monarchs, tortoiseshells, red admirals) whose front ‘legs’ are far too short for standing on. Probably best not to eat them, just in case…
As for birds, they use their forelimbs for flying, or swimming (penguins), or display and balance (ostriches), but never for weight-bearing locomotion. The only partial exception are the hoatzin and the unrelated turacos whose chicks have claws on their wings which they use to climb (but not walk), and which are lost as they fledge. The pterosaors were a different matter, with azhdarchids in particular showing a preference to spend longer on the ground scampering around on all-fours, but of course they hadn’t survived Noah’s Ark…
Oh, and the narrator seems to have forgotten that bats are specifically forbidden in Leviticus 11:19, so avoiding New Zealand bats in favour of flying foxes is no help. Although…did ‘bat’ really mean bat ? I’ve pondered on that over here.
There, on every table, As the best man gave his speech, There was a box, about a hand’s-width each. With a couple of pretty bows, And little holes in rows.
The day was cooling off As the sun was slipping down the sky. A blackbird sang duets With the buzzing of a fly, And the garden’s sweet perfume was in full bloom.
And then the moment came At the bidding of the bride – The bows were soon untied As we gingerly undid the lid, To find a single butterfly inside.
Large, by British standards, Their leaded-lights stained orange-red, And quick enough they roused from bed. Their wings all beating seagull-slow As up away they go.
A cloud of monarch butterflies – A plague, almost, a scarlet host To start the dance and lead the toast – A starling-swarm, a bridal crown, Confetti that went up instead of down.
They soon dispersed into the beds, A doddle for a bug collector – Crowding any flowers still in nectar. A little sugar on the hand, And maybe we could bring one in to land.
But if, like any wedding guest, They hoped to meet their future mate, Or else at least to score a date, Well, better come on strong – They’d all be dead before too long.
And as for starting families, They’d find no milkweed here. Their kids will starve to death, I fear. Some metaphor for wedded life – A pushy groom and barren wife !
First there was sunlight and bedrock and ocean, And acids amino, all churned in a dance – When somethings were randomly formed in that potion Of nutrient flow in a soupy expanse. They hadn’t a thought or a want or a notion, They hadn’t the know that they’d barely a chance; They had no creator to watch with devotion, So where could they go, and just how to advance ? But networks were working and systems in motion Which favour and grow and compete and enhance – And so, life is life – a fluky explosion, A spawny crescendo to blind happenstance.
Yes, I know I put an extra ‘e’ in the title of the picture above, but now it’s so much easier to say ! Interestingly, I’m not the only one, though there is some debate over which letter should represent that extra schwa:
Animalacule (both singular and plural) yields 1 screen (at twenty returns per screen) Animalecule produces 3 screens – this one is my favourite, as it could mean “animated molecule” Animalicule turns up six screens Animalocule generates just 9 entries in total Animalucule scores a measly 8 hits Animalycule strikes out completely – though that’s before this page goes live, of course, which will increase the result to one.
They came at first in ones or twos: Unseasonal, yet harmless. And with a swipe of printed news, I turned those lively flies to flews – A dextrous-forearm mess.
I turned those bottled-blueboys black, A stain upon the masthead group – An asterisk to heavy flack, An apt critique on pap and hack, This headline now a scoop.
But long before I’d reached the sport, I heard some buzzing overhead – And looking up, I must report, A dozen more of equal sort – The paper’s filth had spread !
With tabloid reciprocity And breaking news of utter trash, With gutterpress ferocity I blazed each fresh atrocity Upon my front-page splash.
Zigger-buzzing, flitter-flying, To and fro and fro and to – A dragonfly is zagging-by, His body shiny-new. Ready for the slaughter, With his goggles on and paint-job dry – For three years, underwater, He has somehow learned to fly.
A fighter jet, a microlight, With wings of cellophane – Drunk yet nimble in his flight, He circles round, and round again. A regal blur, a day-glow streak, Who never rests from his deploy – But when he does, he’s plastic-sleek: This summer’s latest toy.
I meet him, though, in hot July, Some distance from the river bank. So jealous in his patch of sky, He watches for a rival’s flank – But they won’t come, and neither will The ladies that he’s longing for. So here he is, patrolling still: A soldier who’s misplaced his war.
One day in our science class, we trooped out to the pond And trawled our nets to haul a hoard from out the wet beyond. We jamjarred up our specimens, our trove from out the deep, And took our volunteers back to have a proper peep. The swimmers and the sediments were busy in their dance, Or squished between the slides beneath our microscopic glance. Tadpoles and waterfleas, fresh-water shrimps, Algae and flatworms and dragonfly nymphs, Rotifers, water bears, snails by the score, Whilygigs, boatmen and duckweed galore. But best of all, the hydra: the monster in our lake – One day, or so the rumour went, it turns into a snake !
Hydra, hydra, Now that I’ve spied ya, I can’t decide what I love about you more: Your proof there’s a Zeus, or Your looks of Medusa ? Not hard to deduce you’re a snake down to your core.
Just think – an anaconda with a plethora of heads To slither round the playing field and stalk the cycle sheds ! But Mrs Patrick told us no, the two did not equate, For hydras were cnidarians, and snakes were vertabrates. The former lacked a brain as such, and var’ous other parts – (Though snakes, our teacher told us, were likewise not so smart, And multi-headed mutants would attack their conjoined brothers) But hydra bred asexually to be both spawn and mothers ! And better yet, they’d learned a trick for ageing without ageing By morphing from their adult selves back to their childhood gauging – So, rather like The Doctor, but with tentacles and stem. I’d like to see old Herc attempt to kill off one of them !
They say you have a silent c – Well, not with teenage me ! Cknidarians, cknidarians, Aquatic antiquarians: Preserving ancient shapes and genes, Behold the mighty cknidarenes ! If only Greeks had known of you, Just think what legends would ensue ! Instead, your polyps are maligned – Medusae, sure, but not the Grecian kind. Contrarian cknidarian, You slithered through myth-infested mind.
Rhyming Couplets 