Spot the Frippet: emperor.

They were never very thick on the ground, were emperors, and nowadays the only human emperor officially still in place is Emperor Akihito of Japan.

Good health and long life to him!

But, even so, I went hunting for emperors the other day. I took with me a small piece of rubber tubing tied up in a bit of netting. 

(It was all right, no one saw me.)

Sadly, I failed to attract an emperor, even though (according to the seller) the tube contained the perfume of a female emperor, a scent to send a male emperor moth:


By Lavaltrois - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7446489

crazy with desire.

Ah well, there are other emperors. If you're in Antartica (though you almost certainly aren't) there's the emperor penguin:


photo by Christopher Michel

There are many different types of emperor butterflies:


photo by Entomology, CSIRO

and there is an emperor angelfish:


photo by Brian Gratwicke

an emperor bream:

 
photo of yellow striped emperor by Richard Ling 

and (brrr!) and emperor scorpion:



photo by Rosa Pineda

If all these are difficult, or impossible (as they are for me) then there's an emperor piano concerto by Beethoven (it isn't dedicated to an emperor or anything, the title was a marketing ploy devised by his publisher) an emperor string quartet by Haydn (one bit of which is based on the tune Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser, or God Save Emperor Franz:

 and there's also an Emperor Norwegian black metal band.

Which would you like to spot most?

Spot the Frippet: emperor. This word comes from the Latin imperātor, commander-in-chief, from imperāre, to command, from parāre, to make ready.