FurBabies by Nancy Beiman for June 14, 2024

There was a kind curate from Kew

Who kept a large cat in a pew.

There he taught it each week

A new letter of Greek,

But it never got further than mew.

(Resists comment about American English…) Sorry, Kate. ‘Am’ is where you are. ‘Been’ is where you were. But Limericks are hard and your teacher may be generous.

That is hilarious!

After a woodchuck wakes up in the morning, can we call him an up chuck?

I’m unsure about this one, Kate.

How much wood could they chuck?

I don’t know what your teacher will say about the grammar, Kate, but I’m literally LOLing! Maybe you’ll get a pass because limericks are supposed to be silly – and you’re certainly not the first poet to use bad grammar to good effect!

Doesn’t get much gooder than this. :)

Needs a little work…

I love it. Reminds me of Tom Lehrer’s crazy rhyming schemes. Like the introductory verse to "We Will All Go Together When We Go. tomlehrersongS.coM/songS

That second line doesn’t quite scan … it IS adorable, though!

Shawm nailed it again :))

Possibly a false memory on my part, but I seem to remember having heard not long ago that research had determined how much wood a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

Limerick is fun and all, but I’m more of a Galway girl myself. Just like Saoirse Ronan. She’s my sister. Anyway, back to rodents…

Mrs. Simon, a Woodchuck’s true story. We had a woodchuck once for about eight or nine years. She would arrive every February with a mouth full of old leaves and had a burrow under a boulder on the east side of the house. I named her Mrs. Simon. Beginning the second year, she would have her babies, raise them, and leave by September. She and I agreed: if she stayed out of my garden on the west side of the house, I would feed her. And I fed all those years. And she stayed out of my garden. Her babies, however, were a handful sometimes, and I would run them back to their side of the property. The last year she left, she came to me, patted me on my knee, and did the same to my husband. We never saw her again. I still miss her.

Hate woodchucks, aka groundhogs. They have moved into the 250 year old catalpa, five entrances and gradually killing the tree. Paid to get rid of them and they have returned with more of the family. Not happy.

Has Kate been reading “That is Priceless” on GoComics? She may be overdosing on Call Me Ishmael and Solstice, the two resident limericists. If so, she is a little young for that strip as it is often a PG rating.