Waltz of the Pinnipeds

In love with sea lions, he is, my twenty-one month-old grandson. The only thing he loves more than "TEA LIE-LINS" is pancakes.  And now he is big enough to help stir the batter.

This calls for a truly stellar chef's apron, tiny size, with an appliqued and embroidered sea lion. Mr. Short Stack's sea lions are California sea lions, not Steller's. A few years back I read an intriguing book about Georg Wilhelm Steller, a German zoologist and the first European naturalist to name several species in Alaska.

Sea lions have such stellar whiskers and droopy eyes. They look ever so much like Count Basie. It has been 3.75 decades since I last heard Count Basie perform at the Pla Mor Ballroom, but I've never forgotten the sense of being in the presence of the Grand Beneficent Pinniped. Om. Such grand walrus whiskers!
Who is the bouncy whisker? That would be my grandson, but what is a bouncy whisk? Yes, A. In a simpler time before apps, even before color t.v., children used to stand on step stools at the kitchen sink using a bouncy whisk to make bubbles in a quart of water with one drop of Joy. If their mommies were feeling beneficent they might add a drop of food coloring to the basin.

pinniped (n.) 

1842, from Modern Latin Pinnipedia, suborder of aquatic carnivorous mammals (seals and walruses), literally "having feet as fins," from Latin pinna in secondary sense "fin" (see pin (n.)) + pes, genitive pedis "foot" (see foot (n.)).

© 2013 Nancy L. Ruder