Pam Ayres - the Platypus

[jtct]

Found this recently and it made me chuckle

 

How God made The Duck Billed Platypus - By Pam Ayers

 

 

 

 

The duck-billed platypus, small aquatic friend

Made from the pieces God had over at the end.

According to His reckoning (He'd not been wrong before)

He hadn't made enough: He needed one mammal more.

 

He studied all the corners in His cupboard large and bare

A little foot here, and a little nose there,

A scrap of fur, a feather, nothing anyone would miss

And God said, "Oh Good God... Yes?..... What can I make out of this?"

 

There was a funny flat tail and a great enormous beak

Which had lain in the cupboard for a year and a week.

There were four webbed feet in the manner of a duck

And hanging on a peg, a furry overcoat for luck!

 

So the turn of the platypus came to be fitted

God sat him down and honestly admitted

That the finished platypus might appear a little odd,

'But look on the bright side of it,' said God.

 

'You can swim in the river, you can paddle in the creek,

You can tackle anybody with a great big beak,

There's a tail for a rudder or alternatively legs

And by way of consolation you've got babies and eggs.'

 

So God took all the pieces into Workshop One

And there he told the men the sort of thing he wanted done.

The Carpenter and Plumber stroked the platypus's neck

And said, "Don't you upset him, he cant run, but he can peck!"

 

So the platypus was made, and his beak was firmly rooted

And God found him a home where he would not be persecuted.

They packed him up and sent him with his tail neatly furled

In a brown paper parcel marked "Australia, The World."

[jtct]

and I love the one about the Eucalypt too ......

 

Don’t water me no more my friend, don’t water me no more

I am an exiled eucalypt far from my native shore

If I had been in Sydney I might have made a show

But I’ve been sent to England and I ain’t going to grow!

 

Don’t stand me on the windowsill and pluck out every weed

Don’t sprinkle me with potash to germinate me seed

My little heart is broken, my country was my all

If I can’t sprout where the kookaburras shout, well, I don’t want to sprout at all!

 

I’ll never feel the rolling paddy melons bump me trunk

I’ll never probe the ‘stubbies’ there and get a little drunk

Not for me the Tasman Sea to watch the breakers roll.

For I am in the window in a tasteful copper bowl.

 

And a gumtree’s heart’s so fearless, he must face the searing drought

But in this English sitting room there’s not much drought about

And of the raging bushfires I do not see a lot

Except for when her husband stubs his fag out in me pot!

 

I need Australian sunshine – I need the blistering heat

A wedge-tailed eagle on me head and a wombat at me feet.

I want to grow where mother stood; I want to be there too

Oh mother dear where are you now? Gone for a canoe?

 

Farewell you noble eucalypts our roots shall ne’er entwine

Underneath Australia, for they have potted mine.

Me little shoot has withered but its facing to the east

Good sailing dearest mother from your exiled gum ......... deceased!