Richard Lederers Verbivore

If you reconfigure the word safari by moving the i to the front, the new words you form are is afar. Our world-famous Safari Park takes us afar, where we can view a global wildlife kingdom. Let’s commemorate the Park’s golden anniversary, May 10, 1972, with a safari through the beastly metaphors that run, fly, leap, crawl, swim, and burrow through our English language:

The human race is filled with congressional hawks and doves who fight like cats and dogs till the cows come home; Wall Street bulls and bears who make a beeline for the goose that lays the golden egg; cold fish and hotdoggers; early birds and night owls; lone wolves and social butterflies; young lions and old crows; and lucky ducks, lame ducks, sitting ducks, and dead ducks.

Some people have a whale of an appetite. They eat like pigs (not birds), drink like fish, stuff themselves to the gills, hog the lion’s share, and wolf down their elephantine portions until they become plump as partridges.

Still others are batty, squirrelly, bug-eyed, cockeyed cuckoos, who are mad as March hares, who are crazy as coots, loons, or bedbugs, who come at us like bats out of hell with their monkeyshines and drive us buggy with their horsing around.

As we continue to separate the sheep from the goats and to pigeonhole the human race, we encounter catnapping, slothful sluggards; harebrained jackasses who, like fish out of water, doggedly think at a snail’s pace; dumb bunnies and dumb clucks who run around like chickens with their heads cut off; bird-brained dodos who are easily gulled, buffaloed, and outfoxed; silly geese who lay an egg whenever they parrot and ape every turkey they see; clumsy oxen who are bulls in china shops; top dogs on their high horses; big fish in small ponds; and cocky bullies high up in the pecking order who rule the roost.

Leapin’ lizards! We can scarcely get through a day without meeting pussyfooting chickens; henpecked underdogs who get goose bumps and butterflies and turn tail; fraidy cats who play possum and cry crocodile tears before they go belly up; spineless jellyfish who clam up with a frog in their throat whenever the cat gets their tongue; mousy worms who quail and flounder and then return to the fold with their tails between their legs; and shrimpy pipsqueaks who fawn like toadies until you want to croak.

Without beating a dead horse, I don’t wish to duck under or leapfrog over this subject and go down a rabbit hole. It’s time to fish or cut bait, to take the bull by the horns; kill two birds with one stone; and, before everything goes to the dogs and we’ve got a tiger by the tail, give you a bird’s-eye view of the animals hiding in our language.

It’s a bear of a task to avoid meeting catty, shrewish vixens with bees in their bonnets whose pet peeve and sacred cow is that all men are swine and chauvinist pigs who should be in the doghouse. Other brutes who get your goat and ruffle your feathers are antsy, backbiting, crabby, pigheaded old buzzards, coots, and goats who are no spring chickens, who are stubborn as mules, and who grouse, bug, badger, dog, and hound you like squawking, droning, waspish gadflies that stir up a hornets’ nest and make a mountain out of a molehill.

Finally, we abhor the parasites, bloodsuckers, sponges, leeches, and snakes in the grass who hawk their fishy games, monkey with your nest egg, put the sting on you, sell you a white elephant, and then fleece you.

But let’s talk turkey. Don’t we lionize and go ape and hog wild over the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed eager beavers who are always loaded for bear, go whole hog to hit the bull’s-eye, and have all their ducks in a row and the ducky rare birds who are wise as owls and happy as larks and clams? From the time they’re knee-high to a grasshopper, they’re in the catbird seat, and the world is their oyster.

So, before you buzz off, I hope you’ll agree that this exhibit of animal metaphors has been no fluke and no hogwash. I really give a hoot about the animals hiding in our English language, so for my swan song, I want you to know that, straight from the horse’s mouth, this has been no dog-and-pony show or cock-and-bull story.

It really is a zoo out there!