Spending poisson d’avril by the French Alps and now able to marry it with German Backfisch, I was also able to hone my Holmes’ skills and solve one of life’s circular mysteries before noon.

As is well known, the legendary French Dahu [dahut or dairi in Jura, darou in Vosges, daru in Picardy, darhut in Burgundy, daù in Val Camonica; also tamarou in Aubrac and Aveyron, and tamarro in Catalonia and Andorra], is a distant relation of the Scottish half-goat species, the Glaistig. The mountain Glaistig has one, sometimes two, legs of different lengths. Zoologists have long puzzled though over why one sub-species of Dahu goes clockwise (dextrogyre dahu) and the other counter-clockwise (laevogyrous dahu), while the Glaistig have one species that goes counter-clockwise (glaistig senestrus) and the other clockwise (glaistig desterus).

I finally figured this one out. It turns out that the French Dahu has two legs shorter on one side, while the Scottish Glastig have two legs longer. Mystery solved. Though if you dig deeper you’ll see that while poisson d’avril does involve fish on your back, Backfisch has a many-layered etymology. Don’t flap about it.