Well, it has been some time since an addition was made to the collective nouns series, so I thought it high time. And falling lambs seemed like suitable springtime fare…

Sailor, bathing, business, space and birthday…

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It has been awhile since I tackled the collective noun series, and so ladies and gentlemen (or should I say ladies and germs), may I present to you the elite of the single-celled organisms, the most civilized of all primitive life forms: a culture of bacteria.

First: I am featured today on PensEyeView.com, check it out!

So, I figured it was high time for an addition to the collective nouns series. This one has been in my mind for a long time, and the word is so perfect, isn’t it? I mean, who doesn’t want to clutch baby chicks?

(a warning: if you’re squeamish, best stop reading right here, just skip to the next entry…)

Of course, I feel a little different about yellow fuzzy chicks after spending time at the endangered species conservation centre my dad worked at—they got boxes full of chicks from local egg-producing farms, as they would regularly hatch eggs to replenish their chicken brood, but the males were useless to them. So, they sent the day-old chicks to the farm, which is great, as this particular conservation centre has many large cats, who heartily endorse the idea of baby chicks for breakfast. One year on the Easter long weekend my sister and I got to go spend some time with one of the handlers there—she drove us through the cat enclosures, and it was so surreal, stopping next to a cheetah, and throwing a huge side of some sort of animal carcass over the fence, along with a handful of yellow chicks from a bucket. It sounds cruel but really, it’s far more natural than any alternative. Still, an odd sight at Easter, I must say.

As an interesting side note, a newly born chick still has yolk inside it. Seems strange, no?

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It has been awhile, so I thought it was time for another in the collective nouns series. I’m feeling rather sleepy today after all the recent action, so I thought a nice peaceful drift of hogs was appropriate…

The rest of the series can be found here.

It’s comforting to keep in mind that however much your job may get you down, at least you’re not an insurance adjuster for rhinoceros accidents. They’re shockingly careless, and never accept responsibility.

Another in my ongoing series of illustrations based on the sometimes poetic and often ridiculous (yet always fitting) collective nouns for animals…

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When I was a kid we lived about 15 miles outside of a small town. We owned a Volkswagen Rabbit that had been acting up, and we also owned a goat. The goat was named Boomer, and he was about the worst animal on the planet—I was even aware of this at the time, but I still loved him. I had made a rope halter in 4-H and was determined to halter-train him, and I would have to literally drag him down the road away from our place, all four of his hooves digging into the dirt in front of him and his head cocked to the side with eyes bulging, and then when we got to the end of the road and turned back, he would take off running, and practically rip my arms out of their sockets until I let go of the rope. Training a goat is not an easy task.

Boomer and my father were mortal enemies. He was always leading the other goats out of the pen, but we could never catch them in the act and see how they were escaping. I can remember my dad out there, stealthily sneaking on tiptoes around the shed to secretly watch the escape plan, and after he had reached his lookout spot, he would wait a sufficient amount of time for all suspicion to die. He would then ever so slowly eke his head around the corner just enough so his eye could make out the corner of the pen, and there would be Boomer staring straight at him. Every single time.

Anyway, the Volkswagen. One day my dad was fixing the carburetor, he had it all taken apart and was following his propped-open Compleat Idiot manual step by step. He realized he didn’t have the proper tool for one part, so hopped in the farm truck to go borrow one from a friend. Out where we lived people often had uninsured vehicles for home use only, so it’s not like he could drive this into town—just to clarify the Rabbit was our only real vehicle. So, he zipped over to a friend’s place, it took him ten minutes—and by the time he got back, Boomer had not only escaped from the pen, but he had also eaten the page detailing how to put the thing back together again. Have you ever seen a man who has been tormented by a goat, and the goat won? It is NOT pretty.

Here’s my question about a goat road trip: who gets to choose where to go? With a carload of obstinate beasts, there must be a lot of fighting over the map (until one of the kids eats it). It has been awhile since I did a drawing in the collective nouns series. The rest can be found here.

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For some reason when I think of bears, I think of visiting the small town in the interior where I grew up. It was a few years ago, and I was staying with a friend who lives many miles out of town, up a very remote road where she lives with her llamas. Yes, llamas. She has an incredible straw bale house (that my father helped her build) on top of a hill, surrounded by beautiful pine trees and overlooking the snaking St. Mary’s river. I had been visiting friends in town and returned after dark, so I had been given a can of bear spray, just in case—there are often bears lurking around there, and you never know what they’ll do. I parked the car outside her fence, and loaded my arms up with the multiple items I needed to carry up the hill with me. Now, remember this is in the middle of nowhere—there aren’t exactly streetlights, as you can imagine. So, here I am, with an armload of teetering detritus, and I have to try to navigate in the pitch black towards the gate in the fence, through tall grass and over uneven ground. I get through the gate, and as I turn from latching it, I lose my footing and I can feel myself stagger. I will never forget that moment, as the realization hit that I was stumbling in the direction of a high-voltage electric fence—but knowing that the only option other than falling into the fence was forcing myself to reel in the other direction, which would very likely result in me bear-spraying myself in the face. At the last possible moment I caught my balance, and though I laughed out loud, it was a laugh filled with that sickly rush you get after a near miss while driving.

Looking back, I almost can’t believe I managed to avoid it—macing myself in the face is so something I would be capable of.

This week’s theme for Illustration Friday is “100%”, and after I spent an hour wandering around today trying to find a sign somewhere that said 100% anything (there should be many: 100% organic, 100% Canadian owned, 100% guarantee—I guess no one wants to claim 100% anything these days), I returned to work thinking that the expedition had been 100% useless. Which made me realize I have been meaning to draw a group of 100% useless characters: a sloth of bears (not to be confused with a sleuth of bears, which is much more active—and inquisitive).

So, it seemed time to revisit the collective nouns. By most accounts, the poetic terms for groups of animals (and other things) were mainly created by writers in centuries past, but I suspect that this one dates from the glory days of Southern Florida in the 1970’s, when you were every bit as likely to see another type of green bale bobbing offshore as you were a group of turtles. Coined also by writers—the writers of Miami Vice.

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“I’m tired of eating just beans,” says I,
So I opened a can of sardines.
But they started to squeak,
“Hey, we are tryin’ to sleep.
We were snuggled up tight
Till you let in the light.
You big silly sap, let us finish our nap.
Now close up the lid!”
So that’s what I did…
Will somebody please pass the beans?

- Shel Silverstein

Where the Sidewalk Ends was one of my favourite books as a kid, and I still know many of the poems by heart. The humour in them was so subtle and perfect, and the fact that the author looked more like a criminal than a writer of children’s poetry only increased his appeal. I once read an interview with Shel Silverstein, and he said that his publishing contracts stipulated that he had final say over the book’s design, and moreover that his books were never to be published in paperback—and a glance through Amazon seems to indicate that this agreement has not been broken. Turning down additional book sales to protect the book’s design is a hell of a move, in my opinion. I knew I liked that guy for a reason.

This is another in my collective nouns series, for this week’s Illustration Friday theme “little things”.