An elk is a type of deer, but elm is a type of wood.
An elk’s antlers can resemble the branches of a tree, but the differences between the two are
plain to see.
The branches of a tree can sway in a breeze, while antlers rely on their hosts for movement,
for example when an elk flees!
Branches are often covered with leaves, sometimes they bear fruit.
Antlers are not adorned by foliage, although they still look cute.
Two things they do have in common: both are deaf and mute.
Of course both can make sounds, but there are no grounds for crediting either with the power
of speech.
It would be as daft to ascribe a conscience to a lowly, parasitic leech.
Elks and elms are as different as whelks and helms; just because two words are similar
doesn’t mean they are.
No, to confuse the two is a stupid thing to do and it’s an avoidable mistake if you do as I here
urge you.
Conceivably, elks and elms might co-exist in the same park, but if you think this makes them
the same it’s a shame—you’re in the dark!
It’s like assuming a football and a bicycle that are in the same place are interchangeable,
which they’re not!
People propagating this misnomer are talking rot, which is something trees have sometimes
got along with the odd knot.
Elks and other deer do not decay in this way until they die, of course, and then they
decompose, which is post-mortem normalcy as everyone knows.
Why not liken dogs to trees, which frees deer from the erroneous comparison?
After all—a fool might say—both have barks and, like the elks and elms earlier, are seen
together in parks!
Obviously the sap who believes this is barking up the wrong tree, as, if you examine the
example below, you shall see.
You can ‘fell’ a tree and a deer can ‘fall’, but this doesn’t make them the same thing at all!
If a tree fell on a deer it would make it disappear, but this could never happen in reverse.
Deer getting the Disney treatment resulted in the film Bambi.
Could a feature-length cartoon about elm trees be as namby-pamby?
And, would anyone go to the cinema to see a tree in the earth slowly grow?
Perhaps we’ll never know.
