A DETAIL OF NANCY EKHOLM BURKERT’S ILLUSTRATION FOR EDWARD LEAR’S “THE SCROOBIOUS PIP.”
Written March, 2021
The Diddly Squib Pox
"The Scroobious Pip went out one day
When the grass was green, and the sky was grey.
Then all the beasts in the world came round
When the Scroobious Pip sat down on the ground.
The cat and the dog and the kangaroo
The sheep and the cow and the guineapig too--
The wolf he howled, the horse he neighed
The little pig squeaked and the donkey brayed,
And when the lion began to roar
There never was heard such a noise before.
And every beast he stood on the tip
Of his toes to look a the Scroobious Pip.
At last they said to the Fox - "By far,
You're the wisest beast! You know you are!
Go close to Scroobious Pip and say,
Tell us all about yourself we pray-
For as yet we can't make out in the least
If you're Fish or Insect, or Bird or Beast."
The Scroobious Pip looked vaguelyy round
And sang these words with a rumbling sound-
Chippetty Flip; Flippetty Chip;-
My only name is the Scroobious Pip...."
(Edward Lear)
There once was an island whose folk were jaded and bored. Their land, though once rich with natural beauty and endless resources, was tired and abused. The people had forgotten how to tease food from the earth or become too lazy to do so. They had plundered the soil, poisoning it and depleting its once-abundant productivity. Rivers ran laden with effluent, the rains unleashed acrid torrents, and the winds whipped up fierce storms of fire and smoke. The seas all around pressed in on the shore with pounding waves and the highest tides in living memory. The air became a cauldron and the forests began to burn out of control.
When the people became paralysed by a strange inertia that overtook their will to counter these rapid, worrying changes in their lives, they started to believe they were done for. It was then that things took a much bleaker, way scarier turn for the worse. Out of nowhere, or so it seemed, came a pox that leaked a virulent venom and started striking down the vulnerable - the old, the sick, the tormented among them. They say it came from 'nowhere', out of the wild, from the deepest jungle one day, on the breath of a diddly squib (esquibus diddlus silvestris). This semi-mythical creature got loose causing havoc, borne by the wind, spreading fear faster, and pestilence further, than wildfire ever was able, like a dragon of old.
The islanders were so startled, so stricken by fear, they panicked, they did. Their leaders assembled and set down laws to deal with the dubious squib pox, to exterminate the beast, that were so unprecedented, so extreme, so draconian, so disproportionate, so lunatic, so farcical, so barking mad, that the people piped up, almost in unison, OK, enough, we will comply, but just for a while, until we bend back into shape. We will stay home and wait things out, we will cover up and keep away from others and bathe devotedly - as long as you deliver us food and wine and satellite news, oh... and more toilet roll and soap. And please, get rid of that diddly squib and its pestilential pox. It is driving us crazy!
So, the lofty leaders got together, by satellite. They were guided by their geneticist-in-chief, a lauded man beyond reproach, and his trusty epidemiologists in the Fatality Allocation Review Team, the esteemed FART. They sat and conferred with the government and came to a conclusion. They must exercise their power, act, conclusively, exert control, direct the deaths. They must stand up definitively to the diddly squib pox (which, in hindsight, became universally labelled as EDS2020). They would throw the kitchen sink at it, dirty washing and all. In a fierce flash of lightning, a mere instant, they would come up with a magic potion that would melt the pox away, stopping the manic spread of EDS2020 and protecting the whole island. However, there were two catches, the first proviso being that treatment would need to be universal and the second - because eradication was out of the question - it would have to be regularly administered, with updates forever. There was no guarantee that the magic potion would work since this was a novel concoction developed in a laboratory and did not use the tools of Nature. Such a daring sleight of hand, such an act of sorcerous wizardry had never been hysterically undertaken before, but this didn't matter because the people were sore afraid, suffering from panic overload. It was untested over time in real life conditions and nobody could say how safe or efficacious it would prove to be, not even the geneticist-in-chief, lauded though he was. But magical thinking was deemed necessary to defeat this fearsome foe. Time was of the essence. "We are smart, we hearty FART", the leaders chanted in unison.
So it was that the fear-stricken populace lined up in an endless slow-moving procession of possession to receive their dose of potion - a shot in the arm that was to become the first of many aiming to deal the fatal death blow to the devious, evasive pox. But with each dose delivered, the pox became emboldened and invigorated. It mutated and variegated. When and where would it all end? Perhaps - a few among the many mused - it would have been better, wiser to leave the beast well alone, unconfronted, unteased into lashing out.
