The Alphabestiary
Copyright 2013 by Richard George
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A is for Arliss,
A mellow armadillo from Amarillo,
Who, one spring, all sad and lonely,
Plodded the prairie from Pampa to Plainview
In search of a mate to share his fate and pillow.
Down in the Breaks and up in the wheat fields
Arliss wandered, past gophers and rattlers,
Through feedlots and cornfields and hog wallows,
‘Til autumn augured winter was coming.
He wanted a she; it wasn’t to be.
Poor Arliss, the mellow armadillo from Amarillo.
B is for Barnaby,
A bandicoot from Ballarat,
Who bothered bumblebees in the berry bushes.
The belligerent bees stung Barnaby’s knees.
Barnaby bawled and bellowed and howled,
Till his overheated brain crashed and burned.
Bitterly he repented,
Grievously he mourned
Ever disturbing the bumblebees in the bushes!
Weeping and wailing he toppled and sat
On a hill hallowed to irritable ants,
And soon Barnaby’s bum grew sore, then numb.
Oh, pity the battered bandicoot of Ballarat!
C is for Cathy,
The coatimundi from Canton
Who cradled her daughter in her arms
As she ran through alleys and byways
Calling for cats to come catch the mice
Who were eating her baby’s morning rice?
Through the streets and past the pavilions Cathy ran
Calling on police and civilians to collect the cats
To catch the mice who were eating her baby’s evening rice.
Alas for Cathy, the coatimundi,
She spoke only Cantonese,
The cats only Greek,
So the mice went on eating the rest of the week!
D is for Disraeli,
The dinosaur from Denver,
Who delivered stray dogs to dowagers,
And decked out derelicts with decent dress.
He fell in love on a day in June,
Went howling under the Colorado moon,
Which peeved the people prodigiously.
They bedeviled Disraeli for the dirges he droned
Till he wept like a destitute dervish
And drowned the dinosaur bedevilers of Denver.
E is for Edelweiss,
The elephant from Elsinore
Who vowed she’d never be a bothersome bore,
So educated herself in all things intellectual,
Of nature animal, vegetable, or mineral.
She stored up clever remarks for parties,
And brilliant ideas for seminars.
Alas! Poor Edelweiss! Her neighbors were apes
Whose sole conversation consisted of japes
About the pusillanimity of pachyderms
And the possible proscription of proboscides
That extended beyond the person’s chin.
F is for Frank,
The flying fish from Fontana
Who chose to go by air from LA to Montana,
But a perch in a pond in Riverside
Flashed her scales and fluttered her fins,
Diverting Frank to dally in her cabana.
Small fry resulted, swimming in schools,
So Frank became a teacher of fishes,
A faithful husband who did the dishes.
He sold his wings to a passing eagle.
He never flew again but clung to his perch
Until he died in a crimson tide in Riverside.
G is for Gilbert,
The goat from Gowana,
Who gambled his gold in Guyana and Ghana.
A missionary swore to save his soul
And make poor Gilbert’s fortunes whole.
Night and day he preached at the goat,
Read him the Bible over and over,
Promised Gilbert a heaven of flowers and clover,
‘Til all his talking wore out his throat.
Gilbert sighed, and inquired the odds
Of a goat like himself ever meeting any gods,
And offered to make the missionary a wager.
H is for Hellebore,
The hyena from Hackensack,
Who bore a burden of heavy heartache,
For Hellebore had loved Herodias,
A hyena from Hyannisport,
With all of her heart and all of her soul.
Herodias, the cad, renounced all matrimony,
And hied him to Hawaii
To do the hula for hordes of hungry Hungarians.
Hellebore hung her head in sorrow
And heaved a heavy sigh and died.
Her spirit haunts the highways of Hackensack
Hunting Herodias, the cad, who never came back?
I is for Ichabod,
The iguana from Ixtapa,
Who was overly fond of his cervezas.
He guzzled in Guadalajara,
He drank till dawn in Mazatlan,
Dos Equis, Corona, Agua de Baño,
He drank it all from Juarez to Zihuatanejo.
When rotgut made him loco in Acapulco
He swore he’d be sober from June to October.
He died in July from going dry,
Poor Ichabod the iguana from Ixtapa.
J is for Johannes,
The jackal from Jersey,
Who journeyed from Jamestown to Johannesburg
Looking for jewels to grace his Joanna’s collar.
He caught the jaundice from a jerboa in Jakarta.
Joanna declared she despised a yellow jackal,
And joined a Janissary from Jamshedpur
On a matrimonial jaunt to Japan.
K is for Katrinka,
The katydid from Katmandu
Who quaffed a cup of mountain dew,
Downed a pound of Polska Kielbasa,
With a side of kohlrabi and kale
And spent the rest of her life in the loo.
L is for Leander,
The lizard from Laramie
Who slithered and slid along the muddy Platte
Through rattler’s burrow and sage hen’s nest,
Through coyote den and prairie dog town,
All to win the love of a Lincoln lady lizard.
Alas! The lady was no lady, not in the usual sense,
Though with lizards it’s hard even for lizards to tell;
The Lincoln lady proved a lusty lizard lad
So Leander languished alone and lost in Lincoln,
Until a passing Lamborghini laid him low.
M is for Milford,
A mongoose from Malkangiri,
A masseur for a Maharaja and his Ranee.
A clever cobra contrived a conspiracy
To capture the Maharaja’s Ranee
And hold her for ransom in Rajapalayam.
The Maharaja moped and mourned,
Hopeless and helpless for he had no rupees,
No emeralds or diamonds or gold or rubies,
To meet the snake’s insidious demands.
“Will no one rescue my Ranee,” he cried.
His people shrugged their shoulders and sighed,
None brave enough to confront the cobra,
Save Milford, who mounted a rescue mission,
And wrestled the cobra into submission.
The Maharaja sang Milford’s praises
With long-winded speeches and flowery phrases,
But gave nary a c
ent or even credit for rent
To Milford the Mongoose from Malkangiri.
N is for Nestor,
The newt from Novosibirsk,
Who detested living where the weather was brisk,
So off he sailed for Nicaragua in a bark canoe,
Paddling his way with a digeridoo.
In the ocean’s middle he met a whale
Slapping the ocean with his mighty tail.
“Stop!” Nestor cried as the wave closed o’er him,
But the tail-slapping whale chose to ignore him,
Which got the best of Nestor,
The newt from Novosibirsk.
O is for Oswald,
The ocelot from Onandaga,
Who opted to audit the opera Otello.
The soprano’s aria brightened his aura,
The basso’s boom made his belly Jell-O,
The alto’s duet he thought a delight,
But the tenor’s bellow he couldn’t follow,
So he opted instead for an Indian raga,
Did Oswald the Ocelot from Onandaga.
P is for Pythagoras,
The python from Paramaribo,
Who found a job for which he was perfect.
A shark was swimming in the jungle waters,
A help wanted sign across his dorsal fin.
Pythagoras applied, swelling with pride,
That he could put the squeeze on deadbeat clients.
Alas for poor Pythagoras!
The shark had forgotten the sign on his fin,
And, since his belly was aching,
He gulped down the python like jungle bacon,
So ended the career of Pythagoras,
The unemployed python from Paramaribo.
Q is for Quigley,
The quail from Quito
Who quashed subpoenas for a fee.
When he came to retire, no longer for hire,
He went fishing for sturgeon in the Caspian Sea.
He speared a specimen with his beak,
The sturgeon dived for the bottom,
And Quigley was suddenly up the creek.
R is for Rehoboam,
The rat from Raritan
Who raced in the maze at Roanoke,
Ran the marathon at Refugio,
Raced a canoe down the Rapidan,
Ran for his life from Recife to Rio,
And died in honor climbing Raton Pass in New Mexico.
S is for Sandoval,
A salamander of Samarkand,
Who spent his youth avoiding the burning sand
By traveling only at night in the bright moonlight
That cooled the sun-burnt desert land,
But when he was older his toes were colder,
So he traveled the dunes in the hottest of noons.
T is for Teresa,
A tortoise from Teotihuacan
Who traveled from Tehran to Timbuktu
Titillating the terrapins that toiled in the tules
With terpsichorean treats of tango and tap.
In Tonawanda, Terwilliger, a turtle of tender temper,
Enticed her with treasure to turn domestic
So Teresa turned her tutus into tea towels.
U is for Ursula,
A unicorn from Uruguay,
Who undulated in ecstasy near Montevideo.
An urchin observed her in wonder,
And hailed her with ululating halloos.
Ursula, understandably unnerved,
Evacuated Uruguay for Buenos Aires.
V is for Vladimir,
A vole from Vladivostok,
Who vitiated his vichyssoise with sturgeon stock.
The maitre-de was mad as could be,
Bid Vladimir boil up borscht burgundy beets,
But Vladimir was true to the vichyssoise he knew,
And bade the maitre-de to stuff his beets
With Caspian caviar and broccoli buds.
The maitre-de evicted Vladimir from Vladivostok.
Now he wanders from Voivodina to Valparaiso,
From Vincennes to Venice to Vienna to Vilnius,
Vaunting vichyssoise as the vitamin for all.
W is for Willoughby,
A wallaby from Wollongong,
Who wobbled on stage to warble a song.
He warbled soft, he warbled loud,
Then he waltzed, and really wowed the crowd.
So give three cheers, and three times three,
For Willoughby the warbling wallaby,
Willoughby, the waltzing wallaby of Wollongong!
X is for Xenocrates,
A xiphosuran from Xanadu,
Who excelled at exciting extraterrestrials.
“Exceptional entertainment” some critics said,
“Expansive and exuberant” others expressed it.
“How far I’ve come,” Xenocrates expounded,
“From the life so drab of a horseshoe crab
To xiphosuran from Xanadu!”
Y is for Yussef,
The yak from Yaroslavl
Who loved to grovel on the gravel.
He met a maiden yak and fell in love.
She bid him behave in slavish ways,
Which won his heart and loving devotion.
He popped the question, she said yes,
If he wore yellow for his wedding day.
He assented with never a hesitation,
Yussef vowed to love, honor and obey,
And so today he is the maiden yak’s slave,
And if he behaves the way she wants,
She lets him grovel on the Yaroslavl gravel.
Z is for Zenobia,
A zebra from Zanzibar,
Who invented a zoological brassiere
With cups numbering four for bovine grace and elegance.
She sold them from Zanzibar to Zimbabwe.
Her fortune made, Zenobia tried other product lines,
With little success. None could bear her lacy teddies,
Her gator garter belts she could not sell,
No crocodiles would buy her corsets.
Impoverished by products no one would buy,
Zenobia retired to pasture in poverty.