Simples Solutions to Life's Perpetual Liffeyness #17: On the Proper Care of Lions

                    

If a Poet bite thy ankle, Poet, speak softly to It.

"Dear Ankle-Biter, Prithee, let go my meagre Foot of Verse."

Making obeisance thus, the Gnawer will often relent.

Serve him or her then a salad of freshest dandelions.

Repeat the etymology in reverence: dent de lion!

Say: "Thou, Most Feral Ankle-Biter, with Teeth of Lion!"

Yank its chain.

Accept its signed first editions, the soft-boiled Eggs.

It will die slowly of the Air it has begun to ingest.

Later, it will use its Dandelion-Teeth to try to bite through the Balloon of its Body.

You will collect many pet lions this way.

There is nothing sadder than a lion filled with air.

Lion-Balloons float up over this Kingdom.

It's too sad to tell him...

"If you had eaten my foot, I might have held a certain fiendish respect for you..."

And then he will leap for you, desiring your Death, you who are Innocent, who are Blameless...

But when he lands on the spines of your gay Elizabethan waistcoat, he will pop.

Lions of this sort always pop.

Air is their Prime Element and not Fire, as with the Salamandyre.

The Salamandyre* lies drowsy, lies a-drowse, in Fire.

And with that creature, you had best feign illness and decline all Visits.








*The union of Salamandyre with Lion will often produce a Chimera.

If this Chimera is killed, basilisks will pour from its Stomache.