Concerning the sanity of coots

          "Mad as a coot!" he said. And the words rang out through the still summer air like a public oration.
          They cut Baxter to the quick. They were not the sort of words to which a man with an inch and a quarter of skin off his left shinbone ought ever to have been called upon to listen. With flushed ears and glowing spectacles, the Efficient Baxter passed on his way. Statistics relating to madness among coots are not to hand, but we may safely doubt whether even in the ranks of these notoriously unbalanced birds there could have been found at this moment one who was feeling half as mad as he did.

(from Summer Lightning, by Sir Pelham Wodehouse)


Coot