What a curious wonder the walrus is  by Mark Brazil  The walrus
is a peculiar, even comical, creature — and not only in Lewis
Carroll’s 1872 poem, “The Walrus and the Carpenter.”  “The time
has come,” the Walrus said, “To talk of many things: Of shoes /
and ships / and sealing-wax / Of cabbages / and kings / And why
the sea is boiling hot / And whether pigs have wings.”  To see
one up close is to understand why in Old Norse they were known
as hval-hross (literally, “whale-horses”).  Indubitably, the
walrus (known to scientists as Odobenus rosmarus — literally,
“tooth-walker”) is a curious beast; it seems not entirely this,
not entirely that.  At sea, they blow and spout like small
cetaceans, their misty breath hanging in the air, though they
bellow like buffalo. On shore, they resemble giant maggots, but
like sea lions they can raise themselves up on their fore limbs
in a manner quite unlike ordinary seals.  They conjure up
strange images of blathering pensioners sipping drinks at the
gentleman’s club; their