Traductio (tra-duk’-ti-o): Repeating the same word variously throughout a sentence or thought. Some authorities restrict traductio further to mean repeating the same word but with a different meaning (see ploce, antanaclasis, and diaphora), or in a different form (polyptoton). If the repeated word occurs in parallel fashion at the beginnings of phrases or clauses, it becomes anaphora; at the endings of phrases or clauses, epistrophe.
I went for a little walk for a little while. I walked from my back door to my little garden. My garden was a 4×4 box that I built out of scrap lumber from my picnic table when I built it myself. My pride and joy was the corn stalk in the middle of the garden. It was 8 feet tall. The corn cobs were as big as bakers’ rolling pins. In addition to that, I had tiny tomatoes, the size of blueberries, and “Holy Cow” carrots, genetically modified, three feet long and deep orange, almost red. I built a five-foot high fence around my little garden to secure it against marauding herbivores.
I hired a kid from the local college to stand guard over the garden at night. I pitched him a tent and ran an extension chord out to the tent. He had his own sleeping bag and mattress. I gave him a .20 gauge shotgun and told him to shoot “anything” posing a threat to the plants.
The first night a shot rang out. I ran outside and he ran up to me yelling he had shot a giant 5-foot rabbit. We ran over to where it was supposed to be. There was my neighbor Mrs. Shmed lying on the ground. She was unscathed but terrified. She had fainted. She had been sleepwalking.
I took the gun away from the kid. I gave him one of those stadium horns and told him to blow it if there was trouble. At around 2:00 am the horn went off. The kid was yelling for help. He sounded really scared. I looked out the kitchen window and was shocked to see a six-foot tall rabbit. It had the kid against a tree and was punching him and kicking him. I grabbed the shotgun and ran out the back door. When it saw me, it turned away from the kid and came toward me. I shot it 6 times. I killed it. I thought it might be good to eat, so I field dressed it and hung it from a tree limb in the back yard. I wasn’t going to tell anybody about the giant rabbit—I didn’t want a bunch of scientists snooping around my yard asking questions. It was bad enough that we almost killed my neighbor, but this was over the top.
Around noon the next day, a game warden showed up at my door. Somebody had reported gunshots coming from my property the previous night. He asked to have a look around. When he got to the back yard and saw the giant rabbit hanging there, he whistled and said “Holy shit.” Sir, that’s not a rabbit, it’s a kangaroo.” The kangaroo had escaped from Coalville Zoo. Its name was Tony. I was advised to leave town for five or six months, until things cooled off. Otherwise, my life was in jeopardy—Tony was a beloved fixture at the zoo and the real culprit was the person who let him out of his cage. The warden started crying and fiddling with his gun. I thought for sure he was going to shoot me.
I put up a plaque for Tony in the zoo. It says “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” his name is inscribed along with his dates of birth and death. It had a collection box that says “Save the Kangaroos” on it. I met an Aussie there one day. He was laughing. He told me kangaroos are considered vermin where he comes from—they cause fatal accidents, they cover the ground with their poop, and they assault peole.
I took the collection box off of Tony’s plaque.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu)
The Daily Trope is available on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.
The Daily Trope 