The Whole Kit and Caboodle

Every morning on Facebook, we post a quote from a Mississippian, usually an author. This morning, we quoted Beth Henley, the Pulitzer-winning playwright from Jackson:

There weren't all that many poem books you could get off a the traveling book mobil. Most books I got was about animals. Farm animals, jungle animals, arctic animals and such. Course they was informative, I learned some things; they's called: a gaggle of geese; a pride of lions; a warren a rabbits; a host a whales. That's my personal favorite one: a host a whales!

-Beth Henley, MS playwright of "The Miss Firecracker Contest"

After this, of course, we had to find more. (Aren't collective nouns fun?) For this, we turned to the Dictionary of Collective Nouns and Group Terms. Here are some of our favorites for you to enjoy:

• Array of Hedgehogs
• Bloat of Hippopotami
• Bouquet of Pheasants (They don't smell pleasant...)
• Cloud of Grasshoppers



A Splother of Rabble,
or a Rabble of Splother

• Crash of Rhinoceros
• Dreadful of Dragons 
• Gang of Elk (At our next neighborhood watch meeting, we're discussing the influx of elk gangs in the area.)
• Kindle of Elephants (Elephants--the reading animals!)
• Parcel of Penguins
• Pomp of Pekingese
• Scourge of Mosquitoes
• Troop of Bees
• Turn of Turtles
• Walk of Snails (Hmmm.... Still pondering this one.)
   
• Consternation of Mothers
• Horde of Young Readers
• Macaroni of Poetry Selections (I'm trying to figure out how to work this into conversation.)
• Posy of Literary Pieces
• Rabble of Readers
• Sect of Old Maids



A Parcel of Penguins

• Shush of Librarians
• Splother of Children
• Wedge of Standing People

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Group_of_Emperor_Penguins.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schoolchildren_reading_1938.jpg