The Poem Is Not Finished, People

Do you remember when you were in school (or, if you're currently in school, do you remember that time recently) and you had a test in one of your classes, and the next class the teacher/professor walked in with an strange expression on his/her face and sort of sighed and announced that every last student had failed the test miserably, even with the curve?

Exactly how does one get one's
own name wrong?

I don't, because I never failed anything in school ever, except I was doing really badly in this one class in college that was taught by a total prick but then I got mono and dropped the class and then retook it with a different professor who was awesome and I totally got an A. And that's why I majored in humanities.

But I do remember being almost the only student who didn't fail the test. And the disappointed and faintly contemptuous look on the instructor's face as he/she broke the news.

"Did your mother have any children that lived?"

Only now, years later, can I empathize with those educators. Because it is with dismay and incredulity that I tell you that none of you successfully finished my guinea pig poem yesterday.

Seriously, WTF?

I came up with the first three lines of a poem inspired by Muinea Guinea, Precocious Daughter's adorable guinea pig:

Hello there, my darling little guinea pig

I love you more than a Lego mini-fig

I think you would look quite pretty in a wig

 

But then I got stumped, and I asked for help. And although I received numerous submissions (thank you, Christopher Waldrop, Bill the Butcher, Riley's Mom, and Smee), they all missed the mark. Meter, people. It's important.

 

Not even funny.

 

It's not even a particularly sophisticated meter - iambic hexameter with an truncation of the first foot. Child's play. But really, I was disappointed by the lack of adherence to the basic tenets of scansion.

 

It's not like I asked for anapestic trimeter.
Dude, do you even limerick?

Consequently, I shall have to finish the poem myself. It's no thang.

 

There is an adorable thing guinea pigs do when they are happy. They sort of jump and wiggle and scurry. It's called "popcorning," as this instructive and darling video shows:

 

 

Muinea does this all the time. It's good to know she's a happy pigu and not just a spaz with motor control issues.

So I shall conclude my ode to the guinea pig with the following:

Hello there, my darling little guinea pig

I love you more than a Lego mini-fig

I think you would look quite pretty in a wig

When I touch your rump, you break out in a jig.

 

 

And that, my pretties, is poetry. Booyah.

 

I'm accepting submissions if you think you can beat me in rodent-themed verse.

 

Spoiler alert: You can't.