greater one horned rhinoceros (not political!)

taking a brief break from political writings: At the Seattle Design Commission last week we looked at a proposal for a new Asian (Greater One-horned) Rhinoceros exhibit for the Woodland Park Zoo. It is curiously different than the African Rhinos that I know, it has one horn and lives in the water most of the time, which made me think of the Ogden Nash poem that I read as a child and then while running on Saturday I composed my own ode to the Asian Beasts:



Thanks to the magic of the WWW I was able to find the poem I so badly mangled on Thursday:

The Rhinoceros

The rhino is a homely beast,
For human eyes he's not a feast.
Farewell, farewell, you old rhinoceros,
I'll stare at something less prepoceros.

Ogden Nash


Inspired by that (and with deep apologies to Ogden Nash's memory) here is my own:


The Greater One-horned Rhinoceros

Sue and Bob were East African White Rhinos,
Sue liked to gaze at the ocean through her binos,
from the warm shore of Tanzania,
she thought she spied a beach in Asia.

While known for their great might,
Rhinos have dreadful eyesight,
while she imagined it was India afar,
it was actually the sands of Zanzibar.

Said Sue to Bob: "Let's take a little swim.
The exercise will help keep you fit and trim.
I've also heard their curries are quite good."
"I'm in!" cried Bob "I'm tired of chewing on wood."

They struck out and at first the going was easy,
but after a while the waves made them quite queasy,
then the rain and winds started to blow a terrible storm,
the rough waters soon broke off Bob's lesser horn.

Just when they thought it was their fate to be salted Rhino soup,
a wave landed them onto a stretch of beach in one fell swoop,
they looked around and it was clear the landscape was not African,
Sue said: "I read PA and this architecture is not American."

Unlike Christopher Columbus,
Rhinos think the world is a rhombus,
but on one thing Sue and Bob were right,
they'd landed in India that summer night.

After a good sleep they both awoke,
it was Bob who first spoke:
"Sue, I must say I feel quite preposeros,
with only one horn am I truly a rhinoceros?
Or with all this swimming have I become a hippopotamus?"
Sue looked at him adoringly: "You will always be my Greater One-horned Rhinoceros".


Footnotes:
1. binos is the South African abbreviation for binoculars
2. if the rhymes don't seem to work, think of the accent of an East African who has emigrated to India