The Alpha-Bestiary
B is for Barnaby,
A bandicoot from Ballarat,
Who bothered bumblebees in the berry bushes.
The belligerent bees stung Barnaby’s knees.
Barnaby bawled and bellowed and howled,
Till his overheated brain crashed and burned.
Bitterly he repented,
Grievously he mourned
Ever disturbing the bumblebees in the bushes!
Weeping and wailing he toppled and sat
On a hill hallowed to irritable ants,
And soon Barnaby’s bum grew sore, then numb.
Oh, pity the battered bandicoot of Ballarat!
B is for Barnaby,
A bandicoot from Ballarat,
Who bothered bumblebees in the berry bushes.
The belligerent bees stung Barnaby’s knees.
Barnaby bawled and bellowed and howled,
Till his overheated brain crashed and burned.
Bitterly he repented,
Grievously he mourned
Ever disturbing the bumblebees in the bushes!
Weeping and wailing he toppled and sat
On a hill hallowed to irritable ants,
And soon Barnaby’s bum grew sore, then numb.
Oh, pity the battered bandicoot of Ballarat!
Bandicoots are a group of about 20 species of terrestrial marsupial omnivores in Australia and New Guinea. Though they specifically belong to the order Peramelemorphia, "bandicoot" was a term borrowed from the Indian bandicoot rat (genus Bandicota), from the Telugu word "pandikokku." Ballarat, on the Yarrowee river in Victoria, Australia, grew quickly from being a small sheep station to a major settlement due to the 1851 gold rush. It had been settled by Archibald Buchanan Yuille and his brother William Cross Yuille in 1837, and Archibald named it after "balla arat" (resting place), the local Wathaurong name for the area. In 1854 it was the site of the Eureka Rebellion, Australia's only armed rebellion, which led to the Electoral Act of 1856 that mandated suffrage for male colonists.
ReplyDeletethe term is used informally for any peramelemorph, such as the bilby