Silly Verse FOR KIDS by Spike Milligan was one of my favourites as a child (I saved up for it with my pocket money and bought it from the village shop) and I still love it. So I decided to make something similar, full of funny, quirky poems: HUMANS ARE NOT OMNIVORES [poems your teacher might not like] (I decided not to beat around the bush with the title!)
Spike Milligan was a brilliantly irreverent vegetarian comedian and author who died in 2002 at the age of 83. He campaigned against factory farming and vivisection and was once thrown out of Harrods for trying to stuff 28lb of spaghetti down the mouth of the food hall manager because they sold pate de foie gras.
“I told him it might give him some idea of how a goose feels being force-fed maize” he said.
I modelled our new book on his, making it the same size and the same layout, so it’s only a little one – just 11cm x 18cm.
His is a Puffin book, published by Penguin. Ours is a Little Chicken book, published by Violet’s Vegan Comics 😉
And both are full of quirky, eccentric, funny poems for kids like ‘Mary Pugh’, above or a selection from Wacky Verse, examples below 😀
I hope Spike would have liked it. I hope you like it too.
All you kids who are sick of being told at school that humans are omnivores – this one is for you! 😀 😀 😀
A bonus of Miranda working at Raystede animal sanctuary‘s charity shop is that she comes across lots of useful things like old knitting patterns and left over yarn that people have donated, which she can then buy and make use of. And now you can make use of this one too 🙂
And I know you might be thinking it’s a bit late in the day to start making this – the day before Christmas! – but it’s only a couple of hours’ work Miranda says, so, if you want to do something with your hands while relaxing in front of that Christmas movie, this is it! 🙂
Now, bear in mind that Miranda is very much her own person, who isn’t one for following patterns too closely, so it’s no surprise that her Father Christmas doesn’t exactly look like the picture on the pattern. But he is very…
He almost drowned when a river next to his field broke its banks and flooded stranding him in a ditch on Sunday.
But never fear, this story does have a happy ending!Animal Heaven Animal Rescuewere on hand and rescued Mike with nothing but a small dingy and an orange lifebouy.
Rescuer Suzanne Gibbons, who runs AHAR, said she only had one chance to rescue Mike due to the rapidly rising flood waters.
“At first I couldn’t find anybody willing to help me go in because the river was flooding really badly,” Suzanne said.
“But finally Mike Fleming of the Killorglin Rowing Club took me out and we managed to get a life ring around the donkey’s neck and drag him to safety.”
Now just look at that lovely grin! *swoons*
Mike is now recovering from his ordeal at Suzanne’s place…
You can read our review of it here, but basically it follows the classic children’s story model in which the protagonist (Patty the panda) goes on a journey to find out about herself by trial and error.
It’s told completely in rhyme which is charming and the illustrations and text are all done in collage which is so different and fun and shows children that they can make art out of anything and encourages recycling.
The moral of the story is that we are all different and that what’s good for one is not necessarily good for another. This is undoubtedly why Laine dedicates the book to the Safer Medicines Trust which campaigns for an end to animal experiments on the grounds that all species are different and therefore results from animal tests cannot be relied upon for human medicines.
So if you’d like your own copy of this book just comment on this post to enter Friday’s prize draw. We will announce the winner on Friday morning. Good luck 😀
It’s ironic because it has happened during this story, but my hard-working laptop has finally given up the ghost. Because of everything I am learning in the crafting of Venus’s latest adventure I am determined to keep my electricity consumption to an absolute minimum so will not replace the laptop. Instead I am attempting to complete this story using my 7 inch tablet. I cannot scan the paintings onto the tablet so I’m photographing them with it. I cannot type words onto these photos so I am writing the words by hand directly on the pictures. I hope you will therefore forgive the foggier-than-usual results and bear with me as I endeavour to do the best job I can with the least possible electricity 😀
Catskill Animal Sanctuary rescues farmed animals, ignites social change to end their exploitation, and champions vegan living. Subscribe to their e-news, Herd Around the Barn: casanctuary.org/herd
Once upon a time there were three humans and their names were Dowatiwant, Dowateewants and Dowatheywant. They did everything together. Dowatiwant was the one who decided what they would do, Dowateewants would copy him and Dowatheywant would copy them.
One day Dowatiwant went into the cornershop, followed by Dowateewants and Dowatheywant.
Dowatiwant bought a packet of crisps and a can of fizzy pop. Then Dowateewants bought a packet of crisps and a can of fizzy pop. Then Dowatheywant bought a packet of crisps and a can of fizzy pop. All three left the shop, one after the other, and walked to the park.
Dowatiwant sat down on a bench and opened his packet of crisps and his fizzy pop. Dowateewants sat down next to him and opened her packet of crisps and her can of fizzy pop, and Dowatheywant sat down next to her and did the same.
There they sat, talking and laughing, eating and drinking, crunching and slurping, until their crisps and their fizzy drinks were all gone.
Dowatiwant dropped his crisp packet on the ground and tossed his drink can over his shoulder. Dowateewants laughed, dropped her crisp packet on the ground and threw her drink can at a tree. Dowatheywant held on to his empty can and his empty crisp packet and picked up those tossed by his friends.
“What are you doing?” asked Dowatiwant.
“Why don’t you do what we did?” asked Dowateewants.
“I’m changing my name,” said their friend as he deposited their rubbish in the bin, “to Sharperthanimaner.”
“The connection between chucking bits of plastic on the ground and cute animals dying of starvation is a demonstrable fact. It’s not even one of those join-the-dots facts like fossil fuel use and homeless polar bears. It’s a dead-hedgehog-with-its-head-stuck-in-a-plastic-cup fact,” wrote Alex Proud, in ‘If you drop litter, you’re an idiot and must be punished’, The Telegraph, 17 February 2014
“… I’d ramp these [litter fines] up and enforce them with the kind of zeal that would have Dirty Harry gasping with mute admiration.”
Oxford Dictionary definition: zoological garden: public garden or park with collection of animals for exhibition and study.
Our definition: Place where wild animals are kept and/or bred in captivity. Zoos are prisons. Prisons in which innocent individuals are kept incarcerated for their whole lives, though they have committed no crime.
Elephants, for example, in the wild, are used to travelling many miles a day in herds of about ten related adults and their offspring. They are very social animals.
In zoos, elephants are usually kept in pairs or even isolated. Their enclosures are incredibly small, compared to what they are used to in the wild, and as a result they often show many signs of being stressed out or bored, like engaging in repetitive movements. Stress behaviours can include repetitive movements, pacing back and forth, head bobbing, rocking, repeatedly retracing their steps, sitting motionless or biting the bars of their enclosure or themselves.
What makes life so difficult for zoo animals is that they hardly have any privacy and lack mental stimulation and physical exercise. Even though you might think that zoo animals would get used to a life in captivity, they really don’t. Even animals that are bred in zoos still retain their natural instincts after many generations of captive breeding.
Animals like polar bears or felines are used to hunting; this habit is replaced by the zoo with regular feedings. Most animals kept in zoos would naturally roam for tens of miles a day.
Zoos claim to help with conservation. However, hardly any zoo registers their animals on an international species database and most zoo animals are not endangered at all.
Even though there are thousands of endangered species, zoos have only been able to return about 16 species to the wild with varying level of success. Most zoo animals released in the wild don’t survive. This is because zoos don’t provide the right environment for a successful captive breeding project. The animals would need to live in habitats resembling their natural ones, especially in terms of climate and fauna. The animals would also need to be raised with minimal human contact and in populations large enough to provide a natural social balance and a suitable gene pool.
Surplus animals are the unwanted animals for whom there is no more space, when zoos have bred yet another cute little baby to attract visitors. They can even be the cute babies themselves when they’ve stopped being cute at the end of the season. Zoos have a systematic “overproduction” of animals. These surplus animals are either killed – and sometimes fed to their fellow zoo habitants – or sold to other zoos or dealers. Selling animals is a profitable way for zoos to dispose of them. Dealers will sell them to hunting ranches, pet shops, circuses, the exotic meat industry and research facilities. Surplus animals are also found for sale on the internet.
To sum up: DON’T GO TO THE ZOO! If a school trip is being organised, tell your teacher why you don’t like zoos and ask them to take you somewhere better. If they won’t listen, explain what zoos really are to your friends and then get together to petition the school. If they still won’t listen, just ask your parents to let you stay home from school that day. Maybe they could take you on a better trip instead, such as to a museum or art gallery.
That reminds me – see what Luke Walker, ‘animal stick up for-er’, did when he was forced to go on a trip to the zoo – now that’s a boy who acts on his conscience! (Though he is sadly unappreciated by those who know him 😉 )
Oxford Dictionary definition: small edible sea fish.
Juvenile-whiting
Our definition: Whiting (Merlangius merlangus) fish are similar in appearance to their larger relatives, cod, haddock, coley and pollack. They have three dorsal fins separated by small gaps, the third fin extending almost to the tail fin. The tail is not forked, having almost a square end. The two anal fins are very close together, nearly touching one another and, together with the anterior fin, are elongated. The pectoral fin is also long and projects beyond the base of the anal fin. A whiting’s upper jaw projects slightly beyond the lower, and the lateral line is continuous along the length of the body. In colour, individual fish vary quite a lot, and there is often a small dark blotch at upper base of the pectoral fin. They can grow to up to 50 cm long.
Whiting matures at between three and four years of age, and spawning takes place at a depth of 20 to 150 m. The time of the spawning varies from location to location: from January to spring in the Mediterranean; from January to September in the area between the British Isles and the Bay of Biscay; and throughout the year in the Black Sea. A large female can produce up to one million eggs. The eggs float in the open ocean and the larval whiting swim with other sea plankton until they have attained a length of around 10 cm. The fish grow quickly, with females growing faster than males, and can live to about ten years of age. The diet of the whiting consists of bottom-living organisms, such as crabs, shrimps, small fish, molluscs, worms, squid and cuttlefish.
The biggest threat to whiting is “over-harvesting” (euphemism) by the fishing fleets of many nations (of course).
Oxford Dictionary definition: person who does not eat animals or animal products.
Our definition: To be vegan means to try to do no harm to all animals, including humans, and the planet on which everyone depends. This means a vegan will do their best to avoid all animal products in their food, clothes and possessions. They will choose only fair trade and organic whenever possible, and will reduce, reuse and recycle to protect the world and its inhabitants from plastic pollution. They will also avoid any activity or practice which exploits or abuses animals, such as visiting a zoo or buying animal-tested toiletries.
Oxford Dictionary definition: 1. large originally American bird bred for food. 2. Its flesh.
Our definition:
Turkeys are known to exhibit over 20 distinct vocalisations. Including a distinctive gobble, produced by males, which can be heard a mile away.
Individual turkeys have unique voices. This is how turkeys recognise each other.
Turkeys are intelligent and sensitive animals that are highly social. They create lasting social bonds with each other and are very affectionate, rather similar to dogs.
Turkeys have outstanding geography skills. They have the ability to learn the precise details of an area over 1,000 acres in size.
Like peacocks, male turkeys puff up their bodies and spread their elaborate feathers to attract a mate.
Baby turkeys (poults) flock with their mother all year. Although wild turkeys roost in the trees, as poults are unable to fly for the first couple of weeks of their lives, the mother stays with them at ground level to keep them safe and warm until they are strong enough to all roost up in the safety of the trees.
Wild turkeys are able to fly at up to 55 mph for short distances. Most domestic turkeys however are unable to fly due to being selectively bred to be larger than would be suitable in wild circumstances.
The male is substantially larger than the female, and his feathers have areas of red, purple, green, copper, bronze, and gold iridescence. Female feathers are duller overall, in shades of brown and grey.
The area of bare skin on a turkey’s throat and head vary in colour depending on its level of excitement and stress. When excited, a male turkey’s head turns blue, when ready to fight it turns red.
Remember the No Bake Blueberry Flapjacks? Well, I didn’t have any blueberries so I decided to improvise with something wild – the blackberries are ready!
So many blackberries and we only needed a few so we left plenty for others 🙂
And we saw plenty of others enjoying them.
I did sustain a nasty bramble injury – ouch!
But we got what we needed 😉
*****
No-Bake Sugar-Free Apple and Blackberry Flapjacks
You’ll need:
4 small apples, peeled and chopped.
Washed, freshly-picked blackberries
Fresh dates, pitted and soaked for 1 hour.
I didn’t measure how many blackberries I had but you can tell from how they look on the plate (it’s a small sandwich plate). The dates weighed 200g before they were pitted and soaked.
Put the apples and blackberries into your food processor together and whiz for a few seconds until well blended.
Oxford Dictionary definition: large edible fish yielding caviar.
Our definition: Sturgeons are native to subtropical, temperate and sub-Arctic rivers, lakes and coastlines of Eurasia and North America. They are distinctive for their elongated bodies, lack of scales, and occasional great size: sturgeons ranging from 7–12 feet (2-3½ m) in length are common, and some species grow up to 18 feet (5.5 m). Most sturgeons are anadromous (migrating up rivers to spawn) bottom-feeders, spawning upstream and feeding in river deltas and estuaries. While some are entirely freshwater, a very few venture into the open ocean beyond near coastal areas.
Sturgeon are primarily benthic feeders (feeding on the river bed or ocean floor), with a diet of shells, crustaceans and small fish. They feed by extending their syphon-like mouths to suck food from the benthos. Having no teeth, they are unable to seize prey, though larger individuals can swallow very large prey items, including whole salmon. Sturgeons feed non-visually. They are believed to use a combination of sensors, including olfactory sensors, tactile chemosensory cues on the 4 barbules, and passive electroreceptors (ampullae of Lorenzini).
Many sturgeon leap completely out the water, usually making a loud splash which can be heard half a mile away on the surface and probably further under water. It is not known why they do this, but suggested functions include group communication to maintain group cohesion, catching airborne prey, nuptial behaviour, or to help shed eggs during spawning. Other plausible explanations include escape from predators, shedding parasites, or to gulp or expel air. Another explanation is that it “simply feels good”.
Sturgeon can live 100 years and have been around since the dinosaurs. Because of their long reproductive cycles, long migrations, and sensitivity to environmental conditions, many species are under severe threat from overfishing, poaching, water pollution, and damming of rivers. There is also a noticeable decline in sturgeon populations as the demand for caviar increases (see Roe on the R page). According to the IUCN, over 85% of sturgeon species are classified as at risk of extinction, making them more critically endangered than any other group of species.
Oxford Dictionary definition: beaten eggs fried and often folded over filling.
Our definition: Omelettes are made from eggs laid by birds (usually chickens) kept in unnatural, confined conditions, more often than not in over-crowded barns with no access to the outside and no natural light or fresh air. Their miserable lives are short, ending when they begin to lay less eggs at about 12 to 18 months of age (naturally, healthy chickens could live into their teens if not taken by a predator, though those rescued from chicken farms don’t usually live longer than 4 years due to their harrowing start in life). Contrary to popular opinion, buying free range is not the cruelty free option since these birds’ lives will also end in brutal slaughter by the tender age of 18 months. NB farms can label their eggs free range if there is access to an outdoor area from the chickens’ barn even though most of the birds in the overcrowded barn are never able to reach the door. Male chicks are horribly killed en masse shortly after hatching.
Buying tofu, on the other hand, is the cruelty free option and if you love eggs, you’ll really love tofu 😀
Leonardo da Vinci is perhaps best known as a painter, with his legendary works including the Mona Lisa, the Vitruvian Man and the Last Supper, among others.
Leonardo da Vinci wasn’t just an incredible artist, he was an inventor, scientist, mathematician, engineer, writer, musician and much more.
The Mona Lisa is perhaps the most well known painting in the world. It is a half-length portrait of a woman who, along with the composition, background and other details, has been the subject of much speculation and discussion. It is believed that Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa around 1503. It has been on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris for over 200 years.
WHAT THEY PROBABLY WON’T TELL YOU IS THAT HE WAS WIDELY REPUTED TO BE:
We know this because Giuliano di Lorenzo de’ Medici (Leonardo’s patron for three years, from 1513…
They’ll tell you a lot of stuff about Pythagoras at school, like:
He worked out that in a right angled triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides: that’s Pythagorean Theorem
Pythagoras is often referred to as the first pure mathematician.
He was born on the island of Samos, Greece in 569 BC.
Pythagoras was well educated, and he played the lyre throughout his lifetime, knew poetry and recited Homer. He was interested in mathematics, philosophy, astronomy and music, and was greatly influenced by Pherekydes (philosophy), Thales (mathematics and astronomy) and Anaximander (philosophy, geometry).
But they probably won’t tell you that:
And “Pythagorean diet” was a common name for the abstention from eating meat and fish, until the coining of “vegetarian” in the 19th century.
Violet's Vegan Comics 