Last night I picked up a seahorse that plays lullabies off of my son’s floor and put it in his toy bin. “That’s not a toy!” he exclaimed. “It’s a snuggly!” And then I realized that my son has already developed his own taxonomy. He may grow up to be … a cataloger!

In celebration of Ogden Nash’s birthday, here’s a poem appropriate to the season that my mother used to read to me when I was a kid (usually when I was slathered in calamine lotion):

MAN BITES DOG-DAYS
Ogden Nash

In this fairly temperate clime
Summertime is itchy time.
O’er rocks and stumps and ruined walls
Shiny poison ivy crawls.
Every walk in woods and fields
It’s aftermath of itching yeilds.
Hand me down my rusty hatchet;
Someone murmured, Do not scratch it.

Reason permeates my rhyme
Summertime is itchy time.
Beneath the orange August moon
Overfed mosquitoes croon.
After sun-up, flied and midges
Raise on people bumps and ridges.
Hand me down my rusty hatchet
Someone murmured, Do not scratch it.

Lo, the year is in its prime;
Summer time is itchy time.
People loll upon the beaches
Ripening like gaudy peaches.
Friends, the beach is not the orchard,
Nor is the peach by sunburn tortured.
Hand me down my rusty hatchet
Someone murmured, Do not scratch it.

Now the menu is sublime;
Summertime is itchy time.
Berries, clams, and lobsters tease
Our individual allergies.
Rash in rosy splendor thrives,
Running neck-and-neck with hives.
Hand me down my rusty hatchet
Someone murmured, Do not scratch it.

The bluebells and the cowbells chime;
Summertime is itchy time.
Despite the cold soup, and ice, and thermoses,
Garments cling to epidermises.
That fiery-footed centipede,
Prickly heat prowls forth to feed.
Hand me down my rusty hatchet
Someone murmured, Do not scratch it.

Hatchet-killings ain’t a crime:
Summertime is itchy time