I Heard Through the Barnyard

It is not even spring yet and here they are, constantly flying at each other, calling themselves names and having spats about anything and everything. Between canaries here, robins there, clueless suckered pidgeons, sappy ostriches, stuffed turkeys, cocky parrots, cunning crows, smelly hawks, cockerels on coke, and blasting peacocks showing off, it's too much droppings, racket and whooshing about nothing. For while the stakes are high, they never rise above their own respective grounds — no matter how high these are. And it's starting to look like a bad remake of an Hitchcock movie.

Ere you flout old ends any further, examine your conscience.

William Shakespeare, Too Much Ado About Nothing

Watch out for the great washing off...

and unchained ducklings¹ having a blast.

That's for telling them to shut their traps²

or stuffing them with too much smelly fish.

Endnotes

1. ^ In French slang, we use the same word for duck and newspaper, which is canard. There also is a well-established (since 1915) satirical paper called Le Canard enchaîné (The Chained Duck) featuring investigative journalism and leaks from sources inside the French government, the French political world and the French business world, as well as many jokes and humorous cartoons. Le Canard enchaîné does not accept any advertisements and is privately owned, mostly by its own employees. Hence the pun with ducklings taking a flight despite increasing censorship from the actual French government.
2. ^ Another pun referring to a French idiomatic expression that literally says “You gulls, shut your trap” used against people who get their kicks in stirring arguments and do not care about the outcome or the stakes at play. They're usually on the lookout for any piece they could grab.

© La Pensine Mutine. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited.

Cover picture: Marinus

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