Watch the birdie

[Barry Arrowsmith]

--- In the_old_crowd at yahoogroups.com, "Aberforth's Goat / Mike Gray" > 

> The small goat ponders, and examines his toes, and squints suspiciously
> at the interloper. Exactly what is this impertinent youngster
> fantasizing about doing to him and watching him do? And where, and why,
> does it like to imagine him doing this? It examines its hooves and
> (ehem) ruminates: *how* does it imagine him doing this? Has he been
> missing a lot of fun all these years?
>
> The small, very innocent, goat wonders mightily about bipeds who are
> obsessed with birds. They should be watched. Carefully. Salaciously?
> 
> Snort. If only it had enjoyed the wisdom of philosophy - if only it had
> read Hegel and knew about the owls of Minerva fluttering in at twilight,
> with wisdom in toe. That's the best reason I can come up with for using
> owls. 
> 

Youngster? Oh, joy!
You flatterer, you.
Paraphasing the immortal W.S.Gilbert might  be more apposite:
"He could easily pass for 45 in the dusk with the light behind him."
In a thick fog maybe.

As for goats - they have garnered something of a reputation in phrase
and fable. Plus unfortunate connotations when the word is associated 
with prefixes like scape- or sacrificial. Stay away from those old temples,
is my advice. If somebody draped in a bedsheet and whiffing of incense 
starts to get friendly - don't pause to ruminate, it could be kebab time.
But you'll have worked that one out already.

Fear not, no salacious thoughts; not about goats anyway. Esmerelda
maybe, but her goat that could spell, no. It'd be inappropriate.

Hegel. Dear old Georg.
Not my favourite bedtime reading but he'd fit in well on an HP site - didn't
he posit that facts were important to a theory, but only to a certain extent?
Lots of posters would be happy with that thought; it'd allow a comfortable
amount of elbow room for textual interpretation and development of theories
about what's what and why in the Potterverse.

> That and the thought of a bunch of lugubrious ravens turning up after a
> bad Poe trip, claiming they bring never more than one package at a time
> - it's union policy and if you don't like it you can ride the Hogwarts
> train to the Amazon and get the package for yourself.
> 

Lugubrious is understandable when stuck in the verse of someone like Poe.
It's hardly a bundle of laughs. 'Specially if Jack Schitt were still in there. 
But there's another reason for favouring ravens over owls in HP, at least
for someone with my tendency to find plots all over the well, plot.
What's the collective noun for ravens? 
A conspiracy, of course.
Lovely!

Kneasy