 St. Saint-San's was racked with pains when people addressed him as St. Saint's. He held the human race to blame because it could not pronounce his name. So he turned with metronome and fife to glorify other forms of life. Be quiet please, for here begins his salute to feathers, furs, and fins. King of beasts, one is the king of beasts and husband of the lioness. Gazelles and things on which he feasts address him as your hyenas. There are those who admire that roar of his in the African jungles and belts, but I think wherever the lion is, I'd rather be somewhere else. Rooster is a roistering hoodlum. His battle cry is cockadoodlum. Hands in pockets, cap over eye, he whistles at bullets passing by. Have you ever harked to the jackass wild, which the scientists call the onager? It sounds like the laughter of an idiot child or a hipcap on a harmonager. But do not sneer at the jackass wild. There's method in his hee-haw, for with maidenly blush and accent mild, the Jenny-ass answers he shee-haw. On my brow with leaves of myrtle, I know the tortoise is a turtle. Come carve my name in stone immortal, I know the tortoise is a turtle. I know to my profound despair I bet on one to beat a hare. I also know I'm now a pauper because of its tortly, turtley torpor. Elephants are useful friends, equipped with handles at both ends. They have a wrinkled, moth-proof hide, their teeth are upside down, outside. If you think the elephant preposterous, you've probably never seen a rhinosterous, who can jump incredible. He has to jump because he's edible. I could not eat a kangaroo, but many fine Australians do. Those with cookbooks as well as boomerangs prefer him in tasty kangaroo morangs. Some fish are minnows, some are whales. People like dimples, fish like scales. Some fish are slim, some are round. They don't get cold, they don't get drowned. But every fishwife fears for her fish. What we call mermaids, they call murfish, lead bohemian lives. They fail as husbands and as wives. Therefore, they cynically disparage everybody else's marriage. Puccini with Latin and Rodner to tonic, and birds are incurably philharmonic. Suburban yards and rural vistas are filled with avian Andrews sisters. The skylark sings around delay, the crow sings the road to Mandalay. The nightingale sings a lullaby, the seagull sings a gullaby. That's what shepherds listen to in Arcadia before somebody invented the radio. Pianists are human and quote the case of Mr. Truman. Sansons, on the other hand, considered them a scurvy band. Like they are, he said, and simian instead of normal men and women. In the museum hall, the fossils gathered for a ball. There were no drums or saxophones, but just the clatter of their bones. A rolling, rattling, carefree circus of mammoth pokas and mesercas, pterodactyls and brontosaurus sang ghostly prehistoric choruses. Amid the mastodonic wassal, I caught the eye of one small fossil. Cheer up, sad world, he said, and winked. It's kind of fun to be extinct. A swan can swim while sitting down. For pure conceit, he takes the crown. He looks in the mirror over and over and claims to have never heard of Pavlova. Anamali, Carnivali. Noises new to sea and land, issue from the skillful band. All the strings contort their features, imitating crawly creatures. All the brasses look like mumps from blowing umpa, umpa, umps. In outdoing Barnum, Bailey, and Ringling, Sansons has done a miraculous thingling.