Best Headline Ever

Oh how I’ve been looking forward to writing inspired by this great 2011 headline from the Irish Sun!

The NaPoWriMo prompt was to mix two registers of language in the same poem, so I’ve done one with some long, fancy, formal words and a bit of low vocab as well. I’ve given you the link for today’s prompt, but mostly because I’m their featured artist with my sonnet from yesterday! So chuffed, really unexpected 🙂

Anyhoo, here’s the ludicrous doggerel for today…

“Farmer Attacked By Furbag”

A headline the like of which has never since ran,

A shock that that shook us from Spokane to Kazakhstan,

A calumny befallen a numpty of a man –

“Devil Otter Ate My Minivan”

 

It seems that a farmer by the name Joe Burke

Whilst going about his bucolic work,

Came upon and straight away cornered the creature

Slandered as ‘Devil’ in the Sun’s lead feature.

 

(This appellation surely was intended to mislead

And manipulate the masses to cough up cash to read,

For otters are peaceable and piscophageous,

To impute Satanic provenance is otterly outrageous.)

 

Yes, he asserted that he’d sustained a bite,

But we weren’t witness, so who knows who is right?

He could be talking out of his welly boots,

Without otter testimony the point is moot.

 

At the very least he showed poverty of judgement,

Made himself a target for otterish assailment,

For if a man grabbed your scruff and stuffed you in a sack,

Would you not make petulcous* attempts to nut him back?

 

Having gnawed its way out of one container,

To persist in its escape was a simple no-brainer.

It was the only logical game plan,

To eat its way out of the minivan.

 

So if you catch an otter, don’t hold it hostage,

It’ll munch through your chassis like a Scot through porridge,

And definitely don’t be like that Burke with his van –

Never plug a wild otter’s gobhole with your hand.

 

A headline the like of which has never since ran,

A shock that that shook us from Spokane to Kazakhstan,

A calumny befallen a numpty of a man –

“Devil Otter Ate My Minivan”

 

*meaning ‘likely to butt with its head’, archaic/literary