Animal House

In Animal House (by which title I call A dwelling whose true name is not that at all) There are dogs on the sofas and cats on the chairs; Wherever you sit you get covered with hairs; While your progress is marked by the yelps and miaous* Of beasts you have walked on in Animal House. There’s an Old English bantam that welcomes the dawn, There’s a cat that sings love-songs all night on the lawn, There’s a bachelor turtle-dove making sweet moan And a puppy lamenting because it’s alone; The rowdiest tavern where topers carouse Is a meeting of Quakers to Animal House. There’s a tortoise asleep in the strawberry bed (They say it’s asleep but it smells a bit dead); There are rabbits — they tell me they pluck them alive — And ferrets in hutches and bees in a hive, And goats, male and female, that merrily browse On the stockings they hang out at Animal House. There’s a little green parrot like old Uncle Ned Without any feathers on the top of its head, He’s eighty years old and he’s just laid an egg; There’s a toad and a newt and a thrush with one leg, A hedgehog, an owl and a Japanese mouse, But . . . people are nowhere at Animal House.