---
title: 'Cats and Rats and Elephants'
date: '2004-01-28T07:30:55-05:00'
permalink: /cats-and-rats-and-elephants/
tags:
    - 'random thoughts'
---

So this morning, I’m flipping through a copy of the [New Yorker](http://www.newyorker.com/) from several weeks back, and I stumble upon this [cartoon](http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?mscssid=H1R7E57BNJQX8LRN3RBLTDCD2R48B1MD&sitetype=1&did=4&sid=69141&whichpage=2&sortBy=popular&keyword=unicorns&section=cartoons). And next thing you know, I’ve got this song stuck in my head, part of which goes:

> Oh, there were green alligators and long-necked geese  
> Hump-backed camels and chimpanzees  
> Cats and rats and elephants, but sure as you’re born  
> The loveliest of all was the unicorn

The upshot of the song is, like the cartoon, that the absence of unicorns from the fauna of the present-day can be traced back to a Noah-ark-flood mishap, in this case that the unicorns were too busy playing and being lovely to recognize that they ought to get on the boat.

But here’s the thing: I’ve only ever heard this song one place, and that’s on an LP I had as a child, which drew its title from another song about the last horse on the merry-go-round, who’s constantly trying to catch up with the others, only one day he looks behind him and suddenly figures out that he’s not last, but first!

I haven’t heard anything off of that record since I was, probably, seven. And, given the tenacity of the cats and rats and elephants now populating my brain, here’s what I want to know: Why don’t I have this kind of recall for things I *read*?