Meeting Ernest

While I was last visiting Scotland, I thought I’d catch me a Haggis and cook it up for dinner. The Haggis, as you may know, is a small, furry, three-legged animal that lives in the Scottish Highlands. It has two long legs and one short leg, so it’s well suited to running around hills. Haggises live in groups called heaps and they are very sensitive to human presences, so it’s very hard to catch one; unless, of course, you come at them face-on. You see, Haggises can only run in one direction because if they try to turn around, their short leg won’t reach the ground and they’ll tumble down the hill.

There are two breeds of Haggis, the Clockwise Haggis and the Counter-Clockwise Haggis. The Clockwise Haggises have their short leg on their right side and the Counter-Clockwise have theirs on their left.

As I was climbing a hill I heard a commotion to my right. I ran to see what it was and I came across two Haggises. One was of the Clockwise variety, the other of Counter-Clockwise decent. They were standing in each other’s path, so neither of them could move. They were yawping and bawling at each other until the Counter-Clockwise Haggis, which was by far the larger of the two, reared its ugly head and chomped off the Clockwise Haggis’ three legs. I rushed in, picked up the injured Haggis, and ran to the nearest veterinarian.
After many hours waiting for the Haggis to come out of surgery, the vet told me it was okay to go see him. I went in and there he was, all bandaged up. He looked so pathetic that I had to stay with him until he healed.

When he did, he wouldn’t let me out of his sight. Of course, he couldn’t walk (I had to carry him everywhere), so this wasn’t very hard for him. I told him that I had to go back to Canada and there aren’t nearly as many nice hills there, but he insisted that I bring him with me. So I did.

On the plane ride over I told him that he’d need a name if he was going to live with me. After many hours, we decided on Ernest Ogilvie. And this is how a Wild Hairy Haggis came to live in Canada.