A Snake Tail
A true story from long ago
There’s no misspelling as I’ll be telling,
A story about a very long tail,
The tail belonged to a long carpet snake,
Who fed on our young chicks without fail.
We lived on a farm, and tiny chicks came to harm,
From a rapacious long slithering snake,
So, I constructed a cage of chicken wire,
To keep the chickens safe from this, Joe Blake.
I placed the chicken pen
Under our high-set Queensland house,
Directly below our bedroom,
Where we could hear a squeak from a mouse.
In the dead of one night, the chickens took fright,
And squawked and woke us from our sleep,
And in night attire, we sped like wildfire,
To find what caused the little chicks to cheep, cheep.
My wife held a hurricane lantern,
Enough lustre to light up the scene,
And see that the snakes head had burrowed under the cage,
To eat chicks for his nightly protein.
So, I grabbed the snake’s tail and, without fail,
Pulled with all of my might,
And tripped over the hurricane lantern,
And immediately put out the light.
In the black of the night, the snake took fright,
And bit down like a dog on my arm,
I’m not keen on snakes, and this greedy Joe Blake,
Had me in a state of acute alarm
My trouble and strife armed with a knife,
And a fresh, flickering hurricane lamp,
Sliced off the head of this object of dread,
It is releasing its vice-like clamp.
So, that is the tale of a very long tail,
I pulled then was a bit in the night,
There’s a sequel to this story,
And much to my wife’s delight.
The next evening when I arrived home from work,
Whilst savouring a glass of homebrew,
A mouth-watering smell came from the kitchen,
And after we’d eaten, it turned out to be carpet snake stew!
©
David Rudder
2012
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