Laetitia decided to return to Saskatchewan.  Her cousin Sophie from Alberta suggested that the trip should include Chaplin Lake and Nature Center and as an afterthought said, “While you’re there, you ought to go to Uren.“  When Laetitia and her group went there they found only a “T” intersection of secondary roads.  A quick check on the Internet revealed that Uren is one of Saskatchewan’s ghost towns.  Later in a bar in Chaplin, Laetitia heard a story about a man from Arkansas who was in the area camping and was told by someone back home to go to Uren because a lot of pretty girls lived there.  When he asked directions from a teenager on a bicycle he got a sarcastic reply based on Uren’s current lack of waste disposal facilities.  It inspired the limerick of the day.

When an Arkansas man from Van Buren
In Saskatchewan asked, “Where is Uren?”
The boy said, “Here it’s found
Mostly on the ground
Where it isn’t especially endurin’.

Laetitia’s Uncle Ralph wasn’t an especially good singer but he loved to sing anyway, especially songs that annoyed her Aunt Margaret.  One of these was the “Cream of Wheat” song that was a radio commercial when he was a child.  The other was his version of the Bird in a Gilded Cage that he made up words for.  It went, “She’s only a bird in a guilty cage and her ears they are green and black.”  He never got beyond the first line before Aunt Margaret’s protests shut him up.  Just for fun, Laetitia decided to continue the theme and finish the song and she condensed Aunt Margaret’s protests into a limerick.

It’s “gilded,” not “guilty,” I say
And green and black ears, by the way
Are just too absurd
For this hapless caged bird
Who’s a trophy wife on display!