How to Tell Wild Animals · Class 10 English · First Flight Poetry: quick revision, 36 bites

Dangerous Ways to Tell Animals Apart

The textbook warns you in advance.

Takeaway. A poem that pretends, all the way through, to be useful.

The Shape of the Joke

Five of the six stanzas are built identically.

Takeaway. The information and the disaster always arrive together.

The Lion and the Tiger

Stanzas one and two.

Takeaway. A set question asks about exactly these two, and when you can use them.

The Leopard

Stanza three.

Takeaway. The first of two stanzas that offer a second chance to be sure.

The Bear

Stanza four, and the most domestic setting in the poem.

You are walking round **your own yard** when something **hugs you very, very hard**. That is a **bear**.

Takeaway. The gentlest word in the poem describes being crushed.

Hyena or Crocodile?

Stanza five does something different.

Takeaway. The only identification you could make without being attacked — and still useless.

The Chameleon

And then the last stanza changes everything.

Takeaway. The joke turns from violence to invisibility, and stops there.

The Straight Face

Listen to the voice.

Nothing in the poem ever **admits to being a joke**.

Takeaway. The flatness is the technique. Never call this poem excited or silly.

Euphemism

The gentlest words do the worst work.

Takeaway. The gap between the word and the event is where the comedy sits.

A Second Chance

Two stanzas are especially helpful.

The **leopard will leap again**. The **bear will hug again**.

Takeaway. Helpfulness pushed one step past sense.

A Real Field Guide

What exactly is being parodied?

Guides are written in this shape: **if you see X**, and the creature **does Y**, **then it is Z**.

Takeaway. Parody works by keeping everything except the one thing that matters.

Answering on This Section

What you must be able to produce.

Takeaway. That last clause is the part most answers leave out.

The Questions Are About Words

Three of the seven set questions ignore the animals completely.

Takeaway. Most of the jokes in this poem are in the language, not the ideas.

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Get the scheme right first.

Takeaway. Six stanzas, six couplets, six punchlines.

How Each Stanza Works

Watch the trap being set and sprung.

Takeaway. The oldest machine in comic verse, used six times without a miss.

8 · 6 · 8 · 6 · 8 · 8

Count the syllables.

Long and short lines **alternate**, and the **couplet** comes in **eights**.

Takeaway. A cheerful trot, carrying news of being eaten.

Does ‘Dyin’’ Rhyme With ‘Lion’?

Set question one.

Takeaway. Answer: not properly, but yes if you say them as the spelling invites.

You Can See Her Working

Why bully a rhyme at all?

A rhyme that has been **forced into place** is funnier than a **neat one**.

Takeaway. The reader is meant to notice the effort. That is the joke.

‘Lept’ and ‘Lep’

Set question three.

Takeaway. Spelling bent to fit a pronunciation. Entirely deliberate.

A New Word, Then Conjugated

And there is a second offence in the same line.

The leopard will only **lep and lep again** — the **invented word** used as though it were an **ordinary verb**.

Takeaway. The funniest line in the poem, for exactly that reason.

‘A Novice Might Nonplus’

Set question five — the grammar one.

Takeaway. Give the corrected sentence first. Then say why hers is better.

Why Keep the Mistake?

Four reasons the wrong line is the better line.

Takeaway. The grammar is behaving exactly like the advice.

The Other Forced Rhymes

Once you look, the poem is full of them.

Takeaway. None of it is an accident.

The Language Matches the Advice

The point that lifts the whole answer.

Takeaway. Say this and the examiner knows you have read the poem, not a summary.

Set Question 4

The textbook explains one expression and asks you to find two.

Takeaway. Three animals in this poem already carry an English saying.

Bearhug

Read the gloss carefully.

A **friendly and strong hug** — of the kind bears are supposed to give, **as they attack you**.

Takeaway. Warm words wrapped round a dangerous creature.

The Laughing Hyena

It is not amused.

Takeaway. The friendliest-sounding noise on the plain means nothing friendly at all.

Crocodile Tears

Grief that is not meant.

Takeaway. Wells did not invent this. She is using what her readers knew.

Danger in Sociable Words

One thing links all three.

Takeaway. Say this in an answer and question 4 becomes a paragraph, not a list.

Every Language Does It

What the last part of question 4 really wants.

Not a **list** — a **noticing**. Human beings everywhere borrow animals to talk about **people**.

Takeaway. Give two examples from your own language, then make that point.

The Serious Ideas

Set question 7, and the marks are in its second half.

Takeaway. Which lines are funny is the easy half. Why they matter is the marked half.

Parody

A field guide with one thing removed.

Takeaway. Parody = the shape of a serious thing, emptied of its purpose.

Too Late To Help

The best single point available on this poem.

Takeaway. Naming a danger is not the same as being safe from it.

Doubts About Cataloguing

The third idea, and the mildest.

The poem belongs to an age of **confident manuals** — books promising to sort the world into **tidy groups**.

Takeaway. Mild scepticism, delivered in a cheerful metre.

And Then the Chameleon

One stanza proves the whole argument.

Takeaway. If one stanza carries the serious idea, it is the last.

In the Exam

How to write both answers.

Takeaway. A plan for the two questions most likely to appear.