True, Friday night I was too busy looking up the word gopher in the dictionary to wash the dishes. Perhaps it served me right, because I found that Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary 1973 defines the little feller as  a “burrowing edible land tortoise.”

Now I ask you: what kind of person would focus on how eatable an animal is in its primary definition?  Maybe a hungry non-vegetarian.

Curious, I rushed to look up human and found  as I suspected that the definition does not include women. At least it didn’t say how edible cannibals consider us.

Why was I rummaging through the dictionary instead of busy in my kitchen sink? Because I was writing a haiku and wanted a better word for turtle to describe keeping dry within one’s shell.  I didn’t find one.