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No. 920: Oliver the Vet

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Oliver the Vet

First | Previous | 2024-01-24 | Next | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/owls/?comic=920

Strip by: Buster Maruca

{Holly walks onto the scene carrying a black-feathered owl.}
Holly: Oliver! You have to help my owl, Lightning!
Oliver {off-panel}: But I don’t know anything about treating animals!
Holly: But you’re a vet! Surely you do!
{The "camera" zooms out to reveal Oliver wearing military garb.}
Oliver: Holly, I’m not that kind of vet!

The author writes:

Vet.

Beware the perils of homonyms, folks.

Initially, I was of the belief that veteran and veterinarian were merely two words that just coincidentally sounded similar, and so received the same abbreviation, but were not related in any other ways. However, while perusing their Wiktionary entries for this annotation, I noticed that veteran is — sensibly enough — ultimately derived from the Latin vetus ("old"). But then, more surprisingly, I noticed that veterinarian is derived from either the Latin vehere ("to carry") — or also from vetus.

Mostly unrelatedly, I do know that we're discouraged from including actual lightning and / or owls in comics, but once I knew that Holly was going to have a pet, I couldn't resist.

Once again Oliver appears with his scar being pretty difficult to see. It runs from above his right eyebrow to below his right eye. Here's a close-up of his face from panel 3, which hopefully shows it a bit better: