Tuesday, December the 21st, 2004

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I Saw Three Ships

I saw three ships come sailing in, but what did I care about ships? I wasn't hanging around in the dockyards because I wanted to look at ships. I am an entomologist, and I was here to trap boll weevils. I watched them scuttling out of sacks of flour being unloaded from one of the three ships, so I pounced on them with my nylon boll weevil net, and ferried them back to my lab.

I cackled as I assembled my equipment. How they glistened, my pincers and knives and scalpels and clamps and suction tubes and Petri dishes! Pulling on my lab coat, the white starched cotton splattered here and there with the blood of insects, I scampered like an excited puppy over to the Dansette and put on my favourite Ronnie Milsap LP. I like to listen to country music as I dissect boll weevils.

I was just sharpening one of my scalpels when the door of the lab burst open. Cursing that I had forgotten to lock it, I span round to find myself confronted by a trio of heavily-armed thugs. They were, to a man, huge, very frightening, and togged out in futuristic Robocop-like uniforms. Their helmets had been burnished to a gleam that I could only envy.

“Drop the scalpel, pigdog!” shouted one of them, loud enough to be heard over Ronnie Milsap. I froze, but managed to let the blade fall from my hand. It clattered on the linoleum. I do not approve of carpets or rugs in an insect laboratory.

A second thug snatched up from my work-bench the canvas bag in which I had put the boll weevils. He lifted the visor from his helmet and looked at me with snarling contempt. When he spoke, I was disconcerted by the fluting gentility of his tone.

“Never, ever, trap boll weevils as they scuttle out of our flour sacks on the dockside when three ships come sailing in,” he said.

Crushed and piteous, I began to mumble something, but he waved a gauntleted hand at me, and interrupted.

“If we ever catch you abducting our boll weevils again, we will do something unimaginably horrible to you,” he said, “So be warned.”

And with that, the three thugs swept out of the lab, slamming the door behind them. I took a napkin from my pocket and mopped my brow. I was shaking. Ronnie Milsap was singing. It was on the very same day that David Blunkett resigned as the Home Secretary.

* NOTE : Yes, these are all the same boll weevil. The illustration is for demonstration purposes only.