Since the launch of the Runcible Owl, people have been asking me what “runcible” means. It’s a nonsense word that first appears in a poem by Edward Lear called “The Owl and the Pussycat,” who get married by a wild pig on a tropical island, and have a honeymoon with fancy food:

They dined on mince and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.

People have generally agreed since the poem was written that a runcible spoon is either a spork, or a grapefruit spoon, or a spoon with some kind of fancy scalloping around the handle.

I was working on Cat McGat at the same time I was sculpting a new owl, and decided he was going to have a lot of texture and detail, so “runcible” seemed like a fair choice to use, especially because I want to release a few special edition pairs of the Owl and the Pussycat (McGat) together.

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