We started our new poem today, The Yak, by Hilaire Belloc.
The Yak
by Hilaire Belloc
As a friend to the children, commend me the Yak;
You will find it exactly the thing;
It will carry and fetch, you can ride on its back,
Or lead it about with a string.
The Tartar who dwells on the plains of Tibet
(A desolate region of snow),
Has for centuries made it a nursery pet,
And surely the Tartar should know!
Then tell your papa where the Yak can be got,
And if he is awfully rich,
He will buy you the creature -- or else he will not
(I cannot be positive which).
Naturally, after reading this we had to google Tartars and yaks. Tartars proved to be only mildly interesting (though apparently Tatar is the more common spelling, but it just makes us think of the LOTR "tater" song!), but yaks turned out to be surprisingly adorable.
And it appears that some papas do buy their children yaks! 
(photos by Jim Watson of Spring Brook Ranch LLC)
(Click here for more yak cuteness!)
When Travis asked Ed to buy him a yak he found that he has the second (non-yak-buying) kind of papa. Ed asked Travis where he planned to keep a yak, and Travis promptly responded, "Out back!" So we are making advances in poetry, though not in animal husbandry.
5 comments:
Oh! We love Hilaire Belloc's poetry!
You know, I just finished reading Seven Years in Tibet and it seems they went through a number of yaks in their travels to get to Lhasa. They named each one Armin (Armin II, Armin III, etc.) - and evidently, a bad yak is quite a trial! They had five or six, and only one really made them glad to have a yak.
OK. Done rambling.
Dy
Seven Years looks interesting -- one more for my reading list!
The yaks in the photos Do look as if they might have a tendency towards stubbornness. On the up side, though, yak meat is supposed to be tasty and nutritious.
I love that yak picture. He looks sort of...cute?
I never thought I would call a yak cute! :)
I am a homeschooling mom and my girls are memorizing "The Yak" among other poems. In googling yaks and tartars today we found your blog! Thanks!
Kellie
That is my husband, my son and our yak ;-) We found our picture on your blog when my daughter searched google images for baby yak pictures. My 4 year old saw the picture first and said, "Hey, that looks like Daddy!" Yep, we bought our kids a yak. She stayed in the house and slept under the grand piano her first few nights. She was unusually tiny; we gave her lots of TLC and fed her a bottle on a round the clock schedule. The kids named her Scribbles because of the drawings she would make on the ground with her front right hoof. Scribbles was so tame that she didn't even require a halter when we would take her out on walks with our sheep. We would brush her daily. We kept her for two years and then gave her to our friends who live on a much larger ranch. She is seven years old now and happily living out her days on a 1,000 acre ranch. For the cost of two iPads, you could buy your kid a yak...
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