The Owl Critic

 James T. Fields

"‘Who stuffed that white owl?" No one spoke in the shop.

The barber was busy and he couldn’t stop;

The customers, waiting their turns, were reading

The Daily, The Herald, The Post, little heeding

The young man who blurted out such a blunt question.

Not one raised a head or even made a suggestion.

And the barber kept on shaving.

“Don’t you see, Mister Brown,’’

Cried the youth with a frown.

“How wrong the whole thing is,

How preposterous each wink is,

How flattened the head, how jammed down the neck is —

In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck ‘tis!”

‘‘No owl in this world ever had his claws curled,

Ever had his legs slanted, ever had his bill canted,

Ever had his neck screwed into that attitude

I’ve made the white owl my study for years,

And to see such a job almost moves rue to tears.”

“With some sawdust and bark I could stuff in the dark

An owl better than that.

I would make an old bat look more like an owl

Than that horrid fowl,

Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather;

In fact, about him there’s not one nature feather.”

Just then with a wink and a sly normal lurch,

The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,

Walked around and regarded his fault finding critic

(Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic.

And the barber kept on shaving.