Hard to Top a Cassowary

What You Give to Someone Special

A message from Claudia Swan: "Here's a challenge: To rhyme jackassery with cassowary, an old and beautiful bird that was, in the longish ago and far away of 17th-century Holland, exchanged as a diplomatic gift."

            A challenge, indeed. Only loosely can the two words be taken to rhyme, but my God what worlds open up. It turns out a cassowary poem has been done. But first, some background.

            I have known Claudia since she was, like, ten years old; and now she is a distinguished professor of art history at Washington University in St. Louis. Her message was in response to my appreciation, in an earlier post, of the word jackassery, as applied to shameless discourse in the U.S. Senate. In Claudia's beautiful book Rarities of These Lands: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Dutch Republic, she tells how Dutch explorers . . .

            Ah, where to begin.  I knew the word cassowary, of course, but not (until after intensive Googling) the animal!

            It doesn't tweet, or even squawk; it growls.

            It is related to the ostrich and the emu (and not, etymologically, to casserole). Its natural habitat is Papua New Guinea and northeastern Australia. It can be as tall as nearly six feet and as heavy as 97 pounds. It can run up to 31 miles per hour and jump seven feet straight up in the air. It has two feet, each with three toes, each with a dagger-like nail that is plenty sharp enough to disembowel a person. Possibly it is able to swallow live coals.

            Fortunately, it is very shy. Stays way back up in the rainforest. Doesn't bother people unless they get nosy. All of which makes me wonder how reliably reported the following sexy stuff can be. (I quote directly from online somewhere, my italics added.)  

            Courtship and pair-bonding rituals begin with the vibratory sounds broadcast by females. Males approach and run with their necks parallel to the ground while making dramatic movements of their heads, which accentuate the frontal neck region. The female approaches drumming slowly. The male crouches on the ground, and the female either steps on the male's back for a moment before crouching beside him in preparation for copulation, or she may attack. This is often the case with the females pursuing the males in ritualistic chasing behaviors that generally terminate in water. The male cassowary dives into water and submerges himself up to his upper neck and head. The female pursues him into the water, where he eventually drives her to the shallows, where she crouches making ritualistic motions of her head. The two may remain in copulation for extended periods of time. In some cases, another male may approach and run off the first male. He will climb onto her to copulate, as well.

            Whew. (The secondary climbing-on is something I would not take lightly -- nor would she -- if this were not, apparently, so: the sloppy-seconds part is fine by her, if for no other reason because it means she will be laying all the more, and more various, eggs.)

            So. You can imagine what a stir it created on a 17th-century Dutch trading ship when islanders paddled out bearing gifts that included (along with beautiful seashells and plants and the odd salamander or something) a captive cassowary. The islanders were out to encourage the Europeans to come ashore and shop for spices.

            Then, when the Dutch were courting the business of Japanese shoguns, they would bring along a cassowary or cassowaries (descendants, bred in captivity? all that running and splashing?) as what the Japanese call a presento.

            To the extent that I oversimplify the Dutch trading aspect, my apologies to Professor Swan. Now, to her challenge. I tried:

                        Don't try to rope

                        A cassowary.

                        If you do you better hope

                        It's lasso-wary.

            Meh. I did discover, in my researches, the following verse, which has been ascribed to either William Makepeace Thackery or Bishop Samuel Wilberforce (and which you will notice, now that you know a bit about the cassowary, is geographically wacky):

                        If I were a cassowary

                        On the plains of Timbuctoo

                        I would eat a missionary,

                        Cassock, bands and hymn-book too.

            There is so much more that I have learned, that I could share. (What are "bands"? Look it up. I did. When someone gives you a cassowary -- oh, thanks so much, and a nice one, too -- what can you give in return?) But this is running long.

Another in Our Best-Selling Series of Limericks About Silly-Ass Males

                        A fanciful fellow named Powell

                        Has, as a pet, an owl.

                                    The owl blinks

                                    And Powell thinks,

                        It wants another vowel.