Glass menagerie

What: Squirrel, Moose/Kangaroo?, Goat?, Prancing Unicorn?, Shark, Fox/Snail?, Dodo
Beer: Centurion's Ghost Ale
Receptacle: Straight sided pint glass
Situation: Official Beer Reading Meeting in the Pickerel following 10th Annual Finland Curry

Lizzy and I have both had difficulty beer reading in recent weeks, and concluded that it was no good simply drinking beer and expecting results. What we needed was an official Beer Reading session where we could concentrate on the readings, and going to the Pickerel after the 10th Annual Finland Curry was the ideal opportunity. We each had two pints of Centurion's Ghost and were rewarded with a veritable menagerie of animals on our glasses. The first to emerge was this unmistakeable squirrel, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed. Perhaps a recommendation to hoard my savings through the winter months and the recession?

Next to be spotted was a kangaroo drinking some of fellow Finlander Jason's beer. However, Lizzy noticed that looked at the other way round, it might be a moose. Moose live in Finland, so this was probably a good sign for Jason and Emma's wedding in Finland next year, which we'd been busy planning at the curry.

Next to emerge was the creature on the right, I think in my beer and which was variously identified as giraffe, horse or dinosaur. Looking at it again today, the underchin or beard is the most distinctive feature and leads me to conclude that it may be a goat, although it doesn't really look like a goat either. Lizzy was then convinced she had a prancing unicorn in the middle of her glass as she finished her first pint. Certainly, there is a distinctive hoofed leg visible, but the horn looks like it's pointing the wrong way and is too big for its head, so I'm not sure. Moving on to our second pints, I was greeted with another animal in the top foam after drinking about a third of the beer. Initially I claimed it was a naked mole rat but actually it's clear to me today that it's a shark, chasing a small fish right in front of its nose. It has fins and a mean looking mouth. Later on, about halfway down the beer I got an animal which to me looked canine, having a snout and a small tail. I think it is a fox or perhaps some other dog or wolf, sitting in a pile of snow, which is why you can't see its legs. Opinion was divided, however, with Lizzy ada mant that it was actually a snail. The night's final reading was in Lizzy's beer and was identified by its distinctive beak as a dodo. I was concerned that this was a bad sign, predicting extinction forthe noble art of beer reading, but Lizzy was less concerned, as it was simply reminding her of going on holiday to Mauritius and seeing a stuffed dodo.