Word To Use Today: walrus.

You're not likely to see a walrus very often, but if you do, you're even more unlikely to see it sitting on a wall.



But then walruses are full of surprises. They can weigh up to 2000 kilograms, and where does all that lovely blubber come from? Lovely fat seals? Oily mackerel or sea gulls?

No. Shellfish, mostly.

No, I don't understand it, either.

Walruses are wonderful creatures. They have few teeth apart from their beautiful tusks, which ivory masterpieces they use for fighting, showing off, and for levering themselves out of holes in the ice.

They use their moustaches to find their food*, and when they get hold of a nice juicy clam they can suck so powerfully that they can extract the meat from it with a single backwards flick of the tongue (so probably best not to kiss a walrus if you value your tonsils, then).

Walruses have an air sac under their chins which they use to help them float while sleeping. 

Walruses have been hunted and hunted, sometimes by orcas and polar bears, but of course mostly by man. The ivory from their tusks is beautiful, but their meat (except for the tongue) is apparently rather horrible. The good news is that now the numbers of walruses being hunted by people is being limited by governments, and their numbers are increasing a bit.

Walruses are altogether most mysterious beasts: but the main puzzle, of course, is still that, with all that blubber and only flippers to walk on, how could any of them ever have got up on a wall?

Word To Use Today: walrus. This is probably a Germanic word (in England we used, long ago, to call a walrus a morse, instead). The wal bit is actually probably something to do with whales, and the rus bit might be a form of the word horse. On the other hand some people think the word comes from the Dutch word wal, which means shore, and reus, which means giant.

*Humans tend to lose food in theirs:


Henry Clay Warmoth and his walrus moustache. HCW was Governor of Louisiana a long time ago.