Author: Jim Hagarty

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

I once had a dollar to spend
But gave it instead to a friend.
The funny thing was
I guess, just because,
That friendship soon came to an end.

By Jim Hagarty

As they usually are, dogs have front and centre in the news lately and so they should be. Man’s best friend too often gets buried (like a bone) somewhere in the back pages. (Brings to mind the old joke: My dog loves your newspaper; I saw him pouring over it last night.)

However, the poor critters featured in recent headlines are in desperate need of some public relations management. These stories do anything but show them putting their best paws forward.

First off is the media coverage of the scrawny little mutt called Elwood who has won the title of World’s Ugliest Dog. Pictures of him on TV and in newspapers confirm that the judges probably did not make a mistake when they voted. He is to canine pulchritude what the horsefly is to the majesty of winged creatures such as the eagle. The two-year-old Chinese Crested and Chihuahua mix from New Jersey is dark coloured and hairless except for a mohawk-like puff of white fur on his head. He has bug eyes and a long, wagging tongue which, as shown on TV, seems incapable of staying in his mouth.

Now, to be ugly is one thing, but to be entered in a World’s Ugliest contest is quite another. It is a question whether or not Elwood had any say in the entry plans. My guess is he wasn’t consulted at all which raises the issue of animal abuse. Is this recognition injurious to poor Elwood’s self-esteem? To make things worse, Elwood’s title comes with $1,000 reward for his owner. Shouldn’t that money be Elwood’s to spend as he sees fit on bones, chewtoys, a supreme makeover, etc.?

A second story is about poor Duncan M. MacDonald who is registered to vote in Washington State but who will now not be allowed to do so, thanks to a narrow-minded judge. The unfortunate Australian shepherd-terrier had voted in three elections, but alas, his experiment with democracy has come to a halt. He might have gotten away with this illegal venture, too, except that he signed one of the mail-in ballot envelopes with his pawprint.

His owner is trying to claim some high ground, arguing she signed up her pooch for voting privileges to protest a system which she says makes it too easy for non-citizens to vote. She put her phone bill in Duncan’s name, then used the bill as identification to register him as a voter. This landed her in court and the clever quip from prosecutor Dan Satterberg was that his office simply couldn’t look the other way. “They say you should let sleeping dogs lie, but you can’t let voting dogs vote.”

No word on whether or not Duncan plans a run for city council.

And finally, a dog in Minnesota is an accessory after the crap, so to speak, now that his owner has been found guilty of putting his pet’s feces in a parking ticket envelope and sending it to city hall. The dog’s master has been ordered to pay nearly $3,000 to a woman who became seriously ill in April after opening the envelope. He also must write an apology letter to the victim and pay a $300 fine.

When the office employee opened envelopes from the drop box, she noticed a brown fluid leaking from one envelope. The fluid got onto her hands and she awoke the next day with a headache and vomited repeatedly and was hospitalized for about two days with an undetermined illness.

This is the sort of thing that destroys trust between dog and owner and that is a crime in itself. When can this poor doggie ever again believe what his master plans to do with his doo doo?

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

Julia Roberts was hitchin’ a ride
So I pulled my car off to the side.
I was havin’ great luck,
Then saw Sandra Bullock.
I told Julia to crouch down and hide.

By Jim Hagarty

Dearly Beloved …

It is not a rule that longtime married couples have to eventually look exactly like each other and yet, in so many cases, that is what they do. Even physical features and mannerisms seem to begin blending after awhile.

One day this winter I saw an extreme case. A slim, 50s-something, man and woman walking briskly along the sidewalk on their way to a parking lot. To begin with, they were exactly the same height and build. They wore identical long red winter coats. I don’t know if they were both wearing women’s coats or both men’s, but they were the same coats.

Same big BLACK fluffy mitts. Each wore BLACK pants. She wore high-top BLACK boots and while his were more low-cut, they were BLACK, of course. She wore BLACK ear muffs and his ear protection, while somewhat different, was BLACK, what else. The only distinguishing characteristic I could see was his brown cap.

They walked with precisely the same gait and at the same speed. A visiting Martian, getting a quick glimpse of these two and leaving Earth quickly without seeing any other people would report to headquarters that all humans look exactly the same. In this couple’s case, the little alien would not be wrong.

I just hope that, happily married or not, man and wife have managed to hang on to some of their individuality.

Otherwise, it would seem a little freaky to wake up one day and realize you were married to yourself.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

If you see some ants in their hill,
Be nice to them, but I know you will.
They’ve built a nice town,
So don’t tear it down.
Unless ant murder gives you a thrill.

By Jim Hagarty

Thomas Edison used to live in my town.

The New Jersey inventor of the light bulb and many other modern devices stayed in Stratford, Ontario, Canada, for a while when he was about 18. He had a job with a railroad company as a nightwatchman in a railway station in the small, nearby town of St. Marys. His job was to alert incoming trains that they were approaching the town, giving their engineers the signal and time they needed to slow down before entering the built up area.

But Edison being Edison, he invented a device which he installed on the tracks a ways up from the station. That device was tripped by the incoming train and the appropriate signal would be set off. For his part, Edison dozed while his little robot did all the work.

Unfortunately, one night the device failed to trip the signal and the train roared through town without getting the chance to slow down. When investigators came to find out what had happened, the found no trace of Edison. He had taken off.

Thomas Edison lived in two locations in Stratford. He occupied a rented house (which still stands) just down the street from the elementary school my son and daughter attended. He also lived for a brief period in an upper storey of a downtown business block, a building also still there.

Edison was born in Ohio in 1847 and died in New Jersey in 1931.