Friday, March 4, 2016

What's the difference between an elephant and a sparrow?

Hi there

When I was nine, I was given some sort of psychological test by my school.  One of the questions was "What's the difference between a horse and a sparrow?"

A favourite  book at the time was "Alice in Wonderland", and a favourite riddle from that story was "What's the difference between a raven and a writing desk?"   Oh, I was so totally in to riddles.

And when the educator asked me the horse/sparrow question, my nine year old mind raced away, visualising all kinds of sneaky answers to this riddle.  I never so much as thought for one minute of a regular answer like ... "the size", which was just a plain old statement of fact, and not a riddle at all.

How my future school life suffered because I couldn't come up with such a mundane answer, I'll never know.

But all this talk now brings me to elephants and sparrows.  Growing up, I was always told that elephants had a secret graveyard where they went to die.  Who knows if this has been proved rubbish?  But I've often wondered the same thing about sparrows.  I must see hundreds of sparrows a week, but unless, perish the thought, a cat has killed one, I never see a dead sparrow.  Do they have a hidden graveyard they go to, like elephants? 

It's a mystery....

***

Oh yes, and  "What's the difference between a raven and a writing desk?"    I haven't the slightest idea.



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