The Owl Critic

By: J. T. Fields, 1880

"Who stuffed that white owl?" No one spoke in

the shop:

The barber was busy, and he couldn't stop ;

The customers, waiting their turns, were all read-

ing

The "Daily", the "Herald", the "Post", little

heeding

The young man who blurted out such a blunt

question ;

Not one raised a head, or even made a suggestion ;

And the barber kept on shaving.

"Don't you see, Mister brown,"

Cried the youth with a frown,

"How wrong the whole thing is,

How preposterous each wing is,

How flattened the neck is, how jammed down the

neck is-

In short the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck

't is!

I make no apology ;

I've learned owl-eology.

I've passed days and nights in a hunered collec-

tions,

And cannot be blinded to any defections

Arising from unskilful fingers that fail

To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail.

Mister Brown! Mister Brown

Do take that bird down,

Or you'll soon be the laughing-stock all over

town!"

And the barber kept on shaving.

"I've studied owls,

And other night fouls,

And I tell you

What I know to be true:

An owl cannot roost

With its limbs so unloosed ;

No owl in this world

Ever had his claws curled,

Ever had his legs slanted,

Ever had his bill canted,

Ever had his neck screwed

Into that attitude.

He can't do it, because

'T is against bird-laws.

Anatomy teaches,

Ornithology preaches

An owl has a toe

That can't turn out so!

I've made the white owl my study for years,

And to see such a job almost moves me to tears!

Mister Brown, I'm amazed

You should be so gone crazed

As to put up a bird

In that posture absurd!

To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness ;

The man who stuffed him don't know half hie

Business!"

And the barber kept on shaving.

"Examine those eues.

I'm filled with surprise

Taxidermists should pass

Off on you such poor glass ;

So unnatural thay seem

They'd make Audubon scream,

And John Burroughs laugh

To encounter such chaff.

Do take that bird down ;

Have him stuffed again, Brown!"

And the barber kept on shaving.

"With some sawdust and bark

I could stuff in the dark

An owl better than that.

I could make an old hat

Look more like an owl

Than that horrid fowl,

Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather.

In fact, about him there's not one natural feather."

Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch,

The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,

Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic

(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance ana-

litic,

And then fairly hooted, as if he should say:

"Your learning's at fault this time, any way ;

Don't waste it again on a live bird, I pray.

I'm an owl; you're another. Sir Critic, good-

day!"

And the barber kept on shaving.

~Readers,

If you have noticed some of the oddly spelled words

and the different form this poem is written, I copied exactly from

an old book of ballads and verses from 1880.

Also, I hope You enjoyed this poem, it is a very comical story

and I can seem to read again and again without tiering of it.

Nicole