Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Animal Crackers

How did I ever eat these with such gusto? Not only are they a fructosey mess, the Barnum's folks also try to economize on the animal's living quarters in a way that just breaks your heart. I don't know if you can see the way the baby giraffe is trying to comfort her stooped mother, but if you could, well, you wouldn't be so Shirley Temple cavalier about eating them, I can tell you that. And on the top of the box (not shown here) they are making a valiant effort to escape. Run little zebra, run! You too, big polar bear!

Speaking of Shirley, I used to watch her on the Shirley Temple movie hour of a Sunday afternoon. Does that make me an old-timer? She pretty much kicked ass as Heidi. (Interruption: I just discovered that Arthur Treacher was in this film! Who knew? And I've been thinking of him as a fish and chips man rather than the goat's milk sort.) I myself was also of the milk persuasion, and I spent hours nursing sick Clara back to health with the leftover milk and honey from my Rice Krispies, which is kind of like Swiss goat's milk.

And I also spent hours tap dancing to the Animal Crackers song, except I could only remember the first line and had to improvise the rest. I'm sure my versions were better than this:

Animal crackers in my soup
monkies and rabbits loop the loop,
Gosh, oh gee, but I have fun,
swallowin' animals one by one.
In every bowl of soup I see,
lions and tigers watching me,
I made 'em jump right thru a hoop,
those animal crackers in my soup

When I get hold
of the 'Big bad wolf'
I just push him under to drown.
Than I bite him
in a million bits
and I gobble him right down.
When they're inside me
where its dark,
I walk around like Noah's ark
I stuff my tummy like a goop
with animal crackers in my soup



I was going to title the post "inside Shirley, where it's dark" but I knew only bad things could come of that. And why is it only "like a goop"? Isn't it just goop?

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2 Comments:

Blogger Steeeev said...

dear betsytacy,

some months ago, i came across a t-shirt design depicting a unicorn in the clouds poo-ing marshmallows and thought to myself, "kids should know about this." with my niece's birthday approaching, i was anxious to track down said shirt. i googled "marshmallow unicorn" and your blog came up. it has turned an otherwise scone-bland morning into something more banana muffin-like. if i owned one of the companies that built books, i would definitely hire you as some sort of sentence writer. anyhoo, hope to see more witty posts. i was surprised and undelighted to see that this blog has not caught fire (in a good way). all the best.

9:20 AM  
Blogger betsytacy said...

Well, thanks. And warm hellos through the thickening ether.
I saw the unicorn pooing marshmallows. It's quite a complicated bit o work. The unicorn looks like something out of Bugs Bunny and the marshmallows are Lucky Charms (including the relative latecomers to the marsh mix: purple horseshoes). The aliens (marshmallowy themselves) are excited about the unexpected wind(poo)fall, but (chances are) they don't see what is really up in the clouds. They just have their mouths open to catch whatever falls. This is a reminder to all of us about the dangers of acid rain, yellow snow, etc. A timely shirt.

7:37 AM  

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