The New Cull Aces

          With no disrespect to Emma Lazarus

The new cull aces here at Aalborg Zoo

Have noticed you no longer love your pet.

Eurasian lynxes do: they love to chew.

North Denmark’s zoo, aware your pets will get

Expensive to keep fed as they mature,

Will gently euthanize the ones we need,

Conserving nature’s food chain. Give us your

Uncuddled masses yearning to be feed:

Lynx fodder can be rabbits, guinea pig-

Lets, chickens, or a horse—you needn’t keep

A pony when its food bill grows too big.

Cull aces put your credit woes to sleep,

Enriching menus with unwanted pets.

Send us your wretched refuse. Clear your debts!

 

Mango

Mango, versed in the cost of a deal,

Aided cops with a big drugs reveal …

Never teach your macaw

Going prices—the law

Only waits for the parrot to squeal!

 

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His acrostic sonnets have appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks, The Creativity Webzine, Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Grand Little Things, Light, Lighten Up Online, MONO, the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, the Satirist, the Washington Post and WestWard Quarterly. The sonnet was prompted by the Independent story “Zoo urges people to donate their unwanted pets to feed their predators” as well as a page on the Aalborg Zoo’s website. The limerick was prompted by the London Evening Standard story, “Drugs gang smashed after parrot taught to speak like a dealer and ‘repeat price list.”