Comments on: Matters of Note

By: smokering

smokering — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:54:21 +0000

Just as well. Shredded wheat is extruded, a process which causes the grain to act as a neurotoxin. This has been directly linked to the insanity, aggressive behavior and eventual deaths of a number of laboratory rats. And you wouldn’t want the London city swwls turning rogue, now would you? That would put a damper on your trip. “Oh, yes, Mother”, we would say vaguely, when asked about you in later years. “We lost her in the Great Swwl Uprising of ‘09. They found her stored in the hollow of a tree with seven other citizens, the lurid brochure of a medical museum still clutched in her hand.”

By: Mother

Mother — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:12:35 +0000

re point 3: said Mother is now in London, having navigated the shuttlebus, 2 Singapore Airlines planes, a sky train, 2 London underground trains and many stairs, escalators and moving walkways all the while transporting 2 heavy bags and a large handbag. Pretty impressive, what?

Have not encountered any ducks, geese, dogs or foxen, but several squirrels who all seem very familiar with your sister Miriam, and who were none too pleased when she beckoned them in their special secret chitter-language, just to show me that she could, and then had no shredded wheat biscuits to give them.

By: smokering

smokering — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:42:39 +0000

OK, firstly: if we’re gonna get personal, need I remind the blogosphere that Mr Great-White-Out-of-Africa didn’t know a wombat wasn’t a kind of bat until I told him? And that he once referred to my friend April as “the girl who breeds enchiladas”?

Secondly, geese and ducks do the same things. They migrate. They fly in V-formation. They eat the same foods, they build nests, they lay eggs, they are functionally interchangeable. Foxen, on the other hand, live in burrows. They aren’t pack animals. They have bushy tails. They have slitty pupils like cats. They are crepuscular (and so’s your face). They are mostly monogamous. They are, in fact, oose distinct from dogs of any kind.

The really tricky issue? Telling Helpdesk Man from a baboon.

By: Mathew

Mathew — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:00:33 +0000

I suspect that several people in this thread have never seen a goose before. Or perhaps they are badly in need of a visit to the optometrist.

By: Helpdesk Man

Helpdesk Man — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 19:28:27 +0000

You people are not qualified to comment, being wrongly brought up without a dog in the family, and thus being too terrified of them to know them by anything more than pictures, and the flashes of their fur sighted while on letter-posting mishes—during which your eyes rolled in terror and your tiny feet scampered you away too fast to gain you any clear impression. For all you know, half of those “dogs” were foxen. So put that in your faces and give it a hefty suck.

Plus, you don’t get practically any geese in New Zealand. I, on the other hand, grew up in the wilds of South Africa among many dogs—both wild an domestic—plus foxen, jackals, hyenas, geese, ducks, leopards, hephalumps, and not to mention the ostriches which could kick your heads in. So there.

By: Mara

Mara — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:20:27 +0000

Ducks and geese are basically the same thing. Fox and dogs, however, are not. Case closed.

The quilt sounds wonderful.

By: Miriam

Miriam — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:36:34 +0000

Personally, while I have sometimes looked at a bird and thought, “Now, is that a goose or a duck?”, I cannot recall ever having mistaken foxen for dogs.

By: smokering

smokering — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:10:30 +0000

Of course it isn’t referred to as the “duck family”; they couldn’t decide whether to call it that or the “goose family”, because they are so dang similar! Your argument is as specious as your face, sir.

By: AprilElf

AprilElf — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 08:49:35 +0000

Ooooh, good points, Helpdesk Man.

‘Sook’, I could live without … ‘manky’ I rather like.

By: Helpdesk Man

Helpdesk Man — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:15:23 +0000

Taxonomically, it's a tie. Geese and ducks are of separate genus, but the same family (Anatidae); foxes and dogs are of separate genus, but the same family (Canidae). Linguistically, however, Canidae is referred to as the dog family—while notably Anatidie is not called "the duck family". Refer to Answers.com: fox, dog, goose, duck. Suck it.