Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, American
“Ha! I Just Got Me Another One. Say Larry, What’s the Daily Bag Limit For Chinese Spy Balloons?,” 1861
Oil on canvas
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Info, or links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here, here (archived if necessary), here, here, here (can be read in full for free on Fridays), here, and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page.
/// When Duck Shooting with Decoys of wood
and a duck call, you’ll fool those birds good!
Shooting up in the air
from a duck blind’s not fair;
they’d at least have a chance if you stood.
/// Does the hunter retrieve what he shoots?
Not in water that’s over his boots.
No, he’ll send out his dog
into river or bog
while this Nimrod seeks drier pursuits.
/// I would never go shooting for sport,
but some hunting’s a whole other sort.
Man’s a predator beast
who’ll, on animals, feast.
I give hunting for food my support.
/// That balloon’s huge and slow— in our face!!
Not some satellite spying from space.
China cheered when they found
we, of course, had it downed.
(It was built in that Wuhan-lab place.)
/// Being spied from the sky sure must suck.
If it “sees” you, you’ve run out of luck.
It scoops up your data
and then will create a
secret file on you in Peking. Duck!!
/// China knew we would notice the thing,
and the “blame Biden” taunts it would bring.
They could spy with precision
and increase our division;
a giant win-win for Beijing.
/// The location it splashed down off-shore,
makes it easy to search and explore.
If, on land it had crashed,
all their tech would be smashed,
and there might be collateral gore.
/// To have shot the thing down over land
might be just what the Chinese had planned.
What destruction might cost,
(maybe fires; some lives lost),
would’ve, crazy conspiracies, fanned.
/// Perhaps two hundred feet tall, it towered,
and, for souvenirs, woods would be scoured,
if shot down at first sight
in its overhead flight.
(Could the thing have been nuclear powered?)