Queer Deer

Homer nodded; Shakespeare gave Bohemia a seacoast; Michelangelo painted Adam with a navel. Last week the august New York Times slipped and fell. Readers of the Times read a pathetic story about a deer, frightened, running for its life through the streets of Brooklyn. Circumstantial was the Times reporter. Said he: "The wanderer was not a large deer, as deer go. It had a manner that plainly showed it expected very little from life", According to the Times, the deer was small, had no antlers. The story spoke of children and Santa Claus. The deer's fate was tragic; a policeman encountered it, shot seven times, killed it.

So effective was the Times story that the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was moved to investigate. The deer turned out to be a steer.

Some of the Times's friends realized with sympathy that its queer deer story was only a shade more embarrassing than a story which the Times printed in September. Receiving a flash from Buenos Aires that the bovine championship of the Argentine had been, won by an animal named Esther Bletchley Challenge, the Times sonorously reported:

"The most important person in Argentina this week is Esther, grand champion of champions in Argentina's annual beauty show. . . . Even President Irigoyen is momentarily overlooked except for the day he presided over the ceremonies at which Esther was declared champion, and even then the president of the Republic played second fiddle to Esther. With insuperable eyes, perfect body and delicate lines, Esther has been admired this week by a great array of high government officials, diplomats and society matrons.

"For Esther is the grand champion shorthorn cow in Argentina's forty-first national live stock exhibition and is more truly a national figure than any Miss America has ever been, with her name on every tongue . in Argentine, including the furthest frontiers and hamlets."

Argentinians were convulsed. Buenos Aires humorists chortled. To their beef-wise minds, nothing could have been more comical than making a cow out of potent Esther Bletchley Challenge, national champion bull for which Bovril Co. paid 30,000 pesos to publicize its beef extract.

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