5.19.24 – Cricket in my Craw

I was going to say this Cricket story stuck in my craw – the alliteration tickled – so I asked Carll to check where one’s craw might be located. Neither Google, AI, nor the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) made this simple. Throat is Carll’s best guess, from the Old English craga, but curiously, you and I – fellow mammals I’m assuming – don’t possess them. Birds’ craws (hunters noticed centuries back) prevent shards and pebbles from descending into the digestion, where they might wreak havoc. Whether this craw is the furcula (or “merry-thought” or, in our lingo, “wishbone”) Carll’s iffy about, anatomy never having been his strong suit. The reason mammals don’t have craws is we don’t fly, something about the clavicle, which Carll kept getting confused with clavichord, which didn’t help.

Cricket in one’s craw sounds distressful enough, keeping in mind that Cricket wasn’t an insect but a dog, a wirehair pointer bitch about my age (gulp), when she met her untimely end at the hands of a futu…