I was doing a crossword puzzle
Yesterday, to pass the time,
The clues were all about animals
Both across, and down the line,
The wife was out in the kitchen
And I’d call the harder clues,
While she’d reply with a patient sigh
As she cooked two different stews.

It wasn’t as easy as I’d thought
Some clues were quite obscure,
Though each would bring up some animal
That we should have known, for sure,
But as I scribbled across the squares
I found some didn’t fit,
I’d call, ‘Lynette, have you worked it yet?’
But she’d never heard of it.

She’d said, ‘Two heads are better than one,’
And I thought she might be right,
The names that came out too long, I thought
Must be an oversight,
But when they clashed with the downward clues
And I crumpled up my hat,
That furry purr by the fireside there
Was just a common Dat.

And things that flew in the night became
Some thing they called a Rel,
They must be horrible creatures, like
Some creature based in Hell,
But as it crossed the Ordothlicon
I knew it must be right,
For on the left was a Rerr that leapt
On a dark and stormy night.

She said that really my spelling might
Be not quite up to scratch,
The ones that I knew as Pidgins flew
The coop in quite a batch,
And honey gathering Lees in trees
Were paired with wild Gorrils,
While Madgers seemed to be burrowing
All though the distant hills.

‘I’ve never heard of these animals,’
I said, in quite a stew,
Lynette called out from the kitchen that
She didn’t know them, too,
I walked around and I locked the doors
And I set each window latch,
In case that some of them wandered in
Like Carroll’s Bandersnatch.

I’m loth to wander the streets at night
If Rogs are on the prowl,
And keep away from the Cagpies nests
And the things that say ‘Miaowl’,
It seems that Berons are on the beach
And Peagulls in the air,
Lynette said better we stay inside
Than to get Peegull in our hair.

David Lewis Paget