Thursday, December 20, 2018

Rik George writes and draws

The Alpha-Bestiary

Q is for Quigley,
The quail from Quito
Who quashed subpoenas for a fee.
When he came to retire, no longer for hire,
He went fishing for sturgeon in the Caspian Sea.
He speared a specimen with his beak,
The sturgeon dived for the bottom,
And Quigley was suddenly up the creek.

2 comments:

  1. The Royal Naval Hospital was built in 1753 on a promontory overlooking Portsmouth harbor. Since there was no bridge, sick or injured sailors were taken to the hospital, where they would recover or die, by boat via Haslar creek from ships anchored in the Solent.

    British sailors injured in the Napoleonic wars were taken to the Royal Naval Hospital in Haslar, Portsmouth, where they would recover or die. Sometimes desperate sailors would try to desert by going through the sewers to Haslar creek; this would be a hopeless task without a paddle, hence the phrase "up the creek" (or "up the creek, or up shit creek, without a paddle") meaning stuck or in trouble. It calls to mind being stranded in a river in a canoe without any means of steering it.

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  2. San Francisco de Quito is the capital of Ecuador. It was founded as Santiago de Quito on 15 August 1534 but renamed for a different saint 13 days later.

    The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water. It is bounded by Kazakhstan, Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran, and Turkmenistan. It has 6 (Russian, bastard, Persian, sterlet, starry and beluga) native sturgeon species; the beluga (derived from "belyy," the Russian word for white) is the world's largest freshwater fish (1,571 kg [3,463 lb], 7.2 m [23.6 ft]) and can live 118 years, but it is heavily overfished because of its roe (beluga caviar). It feeds mainly on other fish but also eats waterfowl.

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