Month: June 2016

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

I once knew a gal name of June
Who slathered herself with perfume.
Her friends’ spirits sagged
As they choked and they gagged.
She finally bathed, none too soon.

By Jim Hagarty

Paul McCartney once said that a good song will always “out.” In the music business, the cream rises to the top. I think this is true in every business and in life generally. Build a better mousetrap and they will beat a path to your door. I have found this to be true with restaurants. People will find a good restaurant no matter where it is located or how much it does or doesn’t advertise. There are several in our area, completely off the beaten path, sitting next to a cornfield, hard to find with GPS, not located on any map – and their parking lots are full. Do what you do and do it well. We will find you.

And what of the songs that never “out.” McCartney himself has written dozens that are still waiting to “out.” Many never will. Well, then, below all that cream is the lesser creamy milk. It is still valuable. The chirps in the forest tally in the millions before the day is done. Some chirpers probably outdid the others. But it takes all the chirps to make a chorus. It would be boring to walk by the forest and hear only that most excellent chirper doing her thing all day long.

Don’t write a hit. Write a song. Bake a pie. Invent a mousetrap.

Whether any of those things rise to the top, is not up to you.

And this is where the “out” comes in. It is “out” of your hands.

By Jim Hagarty

This why I love newspapers. In the Toronto daily a while back, there was a story and photo about rare and endangered reptiles. Aside from the potential tragedy in losing these creatures to the hostile world we’ve created, the details were fascinating, especially about a giant salamander.

Called an olm, the creature was wandering the earth before Tyrannosaurus Rex showed up. Now that’s a survivor! Imagine outliving the dinosaurs. It’s a shame it appears as though they might not outlive the human race. Given our penchant for self-destruction, on the other hand, they might yet be around to someday reminisce about the time when people inhabited the earth.

Besides being old, the olm is blind and very big. But what caught my eye most about the creature is the fact that it can go 10 years without food. I have known bachelors who achieved almost the same amazing stat but it is nevertheless incredible that there is a creature on earth which only needs a meal once every decade. This guy is well on his way to being the perfect housepet, with a feature such as that.

However, the newspaper story did not detail how much the salamander eats when he finally sits down to a meal after the 10 years are up. My guess is a seven-course meal would not do the trick. I’d be throwin’ a few pies his way too, maybe a gallon or two of cider.

Following all that, I would not want to be around to witness the belch from a creature who had just finished eating his first solid meal in 3,652 days. Nor experience any of his other bodily functions.

Also endangered (sadly) is a purple frog the size of a pin which lives four metres down in the earth. I would say it’s a toss-up which creature devours more – an animal which can go 10 years without food or another which eats often but is only the size of a pin to begin with.

Here are the eight other most endangered amphibians in need of help to survive: The limbless Sagalla caecillian, South African ghost frogs, lungless Mexican salamanders, the Malagasy rainbow frog, Chile’s Darwin frog and the Betic midwife toad whose male carries fertilized eggs on its hind legs.

We humans are such an arrogant group we think we’ve got this survival thing down pat. But along with the salamander, they say there is a chipmunk which was also around when the dinosaurs roamed the planet. What stories these two old fellas could tell … Sally and Chip.

Add to that the reality that scientists are still discovering creatures – birds, fish and mammals – which they didn’t know existed and are rediscovering some that they thought had died out.

Even the most sober of newspapers can’t resist the weird and wonderful and I hope they never do give up their priceless “oddities.”

By Jum Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

A man on our street name of Barnes
Had short legs but very long arms.
He swung from the trees
With the greatest of ease.
He was homely, but he had other charms.

By Jim Hagarty

There are people in this world who like to borrow money and not pay it back. I have encountered these strange beings three times in my life and I have detected a pattern.

Even grifters have some semblance of conscience, I guess, but their worldview differs a little from yours and from mine. Like you and I, those on the take believe you should repay a debt to a nice person. However, while you and I think a debt is a debt and should be repaid no matter the relative wonderfulness of our creditor, some grifters believe it is not only permissible but entirely understandable that you wouldn’t need to repay an asshole.

So here’s the plan: Take the nice guy to whom you owe money, antagonize the hell out of him somehow and turn him into a raving lunatic. Now only a fool would repay a crazy person, right?

I am not entirely so cynical as to believe this is purposely done. But it works, it’s final, and if it happens to you, your money is gone for good.

You can toss and turn in your bed at night all you like.

The grifter is sleeping like a baby.

By Jim Hagarty

In my neck of the woods, when, in fact, there were only woods, the Canada Company enticed a Swiss couple from Pennsylvania to come to southwestern Ontario and open a tavern in the middle of what was literally, nowhere. The huge parcel of land then known as the Huron Tract, was late in being carved of the wilderness. There was nothing but thousands of acres of very tall trees. There was no wind; the wind couldn’t reach the forest floor. Not much snow made it down to the ground either. The Indians didn’t hang around much. They travelled through here on hunting excursions but never put down roots.

Nevertheless, developers saw the potential and today, the area is thriving.

But in the late 1820s, when Sebastian and Mary Fryfogel were commissioned to open their log tavern, there was not a lot of traffic. But they pressed on.

Fryfogel’s Tavern opened up in a clearing. All ready for business.

It would be two years before they had a customer.

Now that’s patience.

They replaced the log building with a brick one in the 1850s. The building still stands, though closed for the last 50 years. Heritage groups care for it.

So if your new business is taking its time getting going, remember the Fryfogels.

At least going over the books those first two years probably didn’t take long.

By Jim Hagarty

Life is hard sometimes. I could list the many ways this is true and the circumstances that prevent unending glee in a person, but the following situation is one that makes me want to sit on a dissolving raft someday out in the middle of the Atlantic.

The only way I can open the trunk of my 1997 Pontiac Sunfire is to fold the back seat down, crawl on my belly in through the opening behind the seat, bang my head seven times on the steel structure that forms the trunk lid, shine a flashlight on the lock, insert a screwdriver in a little slot and twist.

I just came back from opening my trunk and feel like a bear that just escaped from a trap.

I know, I know. A three-week old fawn in the woods has bigger problems than a stubborn trunk lid. But somehow, knowing that, only makes me want to be a three-week old fawn in the woods.

I’d put up with being chased by a coyote any time if it meant popping open my trunk was not on the day’s agenda.

By Jim Hagarty

Thank the stars we live in a country like Canada with a public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Only on CBC Radio could an interview be heard with a scientist who has researched what makes a mouse happy.

Listening to this interview on Saturday afternoon, several thoughts occurred to me (once I got past the obvious one: Why am I listening to this interview?)

Would a life spent studying such subjects as the happiness of mice be a life misspent?

Once the answer to the questions surrounding a mouse’s contentment levels have been established, will the resulting knowledge have added anything meaningful to the world?

But this was my overriding feeling on hearing what I was hearing: Call me hardhearted, which I’m sure I am, but I don’t really give a fiddler’s fork whether mice are happy or suffer from chronic depression.

As I write that last line, I realize it seems sort of mean but if I was a scientist – and I could have been except for a tragic shortage of brains which has plagued me since birth – I believe I could have found a million or two more important things to study before I turned my attention to the serenity of the humble mouse. Things such as why grilled cheese sandwiches are not considered high cuisine or why Toronto doesn’t have an NHL team.

Scientist or no, however, I think I could have come up with a few suggestions as to what would make a mouse happy, even without a few years of intense study.

I’m guessing some sort of steady food supply might put a smile on its furry little face. A compost pile, say, with a twice weekly deposit of kitchen scraps delivered fresh and on time.

A cat epidemic such as distemper, for example, which can wipe out a well-populated barn in a couple of weeks might be guaranteed to cheery up the gloomiest rodent, I would expect.

And somewhere warm to spend the winters, such as above my basement ceiling, for example, would probably cause a mouse to sit back one day and remark, “Ah, this is the life.”

But, what would I know?

Our real researcher referred to above, did an experiment. He placed a female mouse in a cage with a male mouse. This seemed to make both of them quite happy as they got busy planning a family.

Now, this is what separates the research of an authentic scientist from a piker like myself. It wouldn’t have occurred to me that a couple of lonely mice thrown together on a blind date like that might cheer up almost immediately.

But here’s where the real science came in. The researcher recorded the sounds they made, too high for the human ear to perceive, then slowed them down four times and played them on the radio. He pointed out how the two mice were singing to each other prior to, well, you know, doing other things to each other.

Providing one of them wasn’t tone deaf, I could see how music, in this case, could have charms to soothe the savage breast.

And how they would live happily ever after

By Jim Hagarty

There is no animal alive
More dangerous than man.
I’ve tried to think of even one
But I don’t think I can.

No creature ever roamed the earth
With meaner inclinations.
No lion, tiger, shark or bear
Can match man’s degradations.

But man believes he is advanced
Because he dominates.
The truth is man’s the only kind
That destroys what he hates.

While other beings roar and growl
And seem to be a danger,
Man alone is happy to
Annihilate a stranger.

I wouldn’t go into a pen
With a mean rattlesnake,
But human cages I’ve been in
Were a bigger mistake.

I managed just now to escape
A human viper’s grasp.
I know how Cleopatra felt
When bitten by that asp.

We’re taught to love each other
But always it’s a test
Because some humans’ habitats
Are true Black Widows’ nests.