[Coco] furriners, more regional dialect

[KnudsenMJ at aol.com]

In a message dated 8/29/04 10:25:38 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
alxevans at concentric.net writes:

> > How about emus?  Do they survive only in crossword puzzles?  --Mike K.
>  
>  Considering the number that I personally have seen over the years, I 
>  seriously doubt that they have gone the way of the dodo and the 
>  passenger pigeon.

And then there is the Rhea, which I suspect is not only extinct, but appears 
much more rarely in the crosswords.

Speaking of crossword rarities, who has ever heard of an "ort", meaning a 
table scrap of food?  My unabridged dictionary says it's a Danish-derived dialect 
word, so I'd expect northern Midwesterners to know it.  But I never, ever, 
heard or saw it till the x-words.  --Mike K.