Nuts to you, nyah!!!

How's this for a Generation X moment? I was called in this morning at the last minute to teach some of our just-out-of-kindy kids for an hour, with no prep time. The activity involved acrostic poems with the names of animals starting with each letter in the kids' names. So the first thing we had to do was brainstorm for animals starting with each letter of the alphabet.

The kids were pretty good at this (although a few of them didn't get that I only wanted animals, not just any words starting with each letter), but we got stuck on N. Sure enough, I don't think our kindergarten program includes teaching them any animals that start with N, as I realized while standing there at the board trying frantically to think of one myself. What to do?

Fortunately, an old favorite of my own very young childhood came to mind right then. Remember Sweet Pickles? I had a complete set of the books once upon a time, and loved to read them again and again back when I had just learned to read. It hadn't even occurred to me in years to wonder if they were still in print; apparently they're not, but that Amazon link seems to indicate that they are still to be had one way or another. Quite a memory to come at me out of left field while in a tight place on the job.

Of course, remembering the books was only half the battle. I still needed to remember which animal they used for N. Soon enough, it came to me: Nightingale. I misspelled it on my first try and I'm sure the kids couldn't even begin to pronounce it, but it was good enough for the moment. Good old Nasty Nightingale - the title line of this post is her signature phrase.

That misty memory also came in handy on Q(uail) and U(nicorn). I did, however, decide aginst using Xerus for X (I went with Fox instead, as is more or less official school policy for that one). I seem to recall some debates with grown-ups when I was a kid as to whether there really was such a thing as a xerus, even after I found an encyclopedia article complete with a picture of a real one. That, of course, would not be the only time I got the final word from a teacher on something I knew she was wrong about. (Hey, doesn't everybody know "RSVP" stands for "Respond Soon Very Promptly"?)

Besides, even if we are going for animal words, I still tend to go with the immortal advice of Shel Silverstein: "X is for xylophone, because X is always for xylophone!"

Edited to add: Um, yes. I am indeed aware that if I didn't want to use Xerus because some people don't think they're real, I probably shouldn't have used Unicorn either. But hey, unicorns are fun to draw and kids usually know what they are. Can you draw or explain a xerus?