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Northern Spotted Owl © Greg Vaughn, Tom Stack & Associates

ODE TO THE
SPOTTED OWL

By Sunny Hancock


This old world is in a turmoil in most everybody’s view,
Seems like we all got different notions of the things we oughta do
From balancing the budget and the price of foreign aid
To that hole up in the ozone all those little spray cans made.

Unemployment’s runnin’ rampant, S&L’s are going broke,
People’s jobs are disappearing like a puff of Injun smoke.
But the thing that keeps me goin’ though our problems aren’t
all solved,
Is that the dinosaurs became extinct before the EPA evolved.

What would have happened thirty million years ago today
At the annual convention of the Caveman’s EPA?
The chairman said, “Boys listen here to what I’m tellin’ you,
If we ever save this planet here’s some things we’ve gotta do.

“We have to dam this waterway and flood that great big flat.
’Cause we gotta have a bit more Brontosaurus Habitat.”
Then from the front row came a voice that said, “Oh yes, we must comply.
This Earth won’t last a month if all our dinosaurs should die.”

But from the back row came another voice that said, “Doggone you.
You build a dam and damn there goes our wild and scenic rivers too.
The caves that all these people keep! Why they’re a total mess,
Let’s evict these slobs and tell ’em we’ve declared this wilderness.”

Then Susie Cave Girl piped right up and says, “But just look here
At that big hole that’s forming in our upper atmosphere.
I have observed this all year long, researched it with my class,
It’s caused by all those uncouth Meganthropus, passin’ gas!

“Let’s build a fence and move ’em down where they can get more greens,
And keep ’em plum away from that big patch of wild beans.”
“Ah yes,” said Billy Bonehead, “and let’s tell those silly fools
Quit making all those pretty rocks up into arrowheads and tools.”

At the rate they’re going now the only place you’ll ever see ’em
Is a few small stones we’ll gather up and put in some museum.
I think it’s bloody awful and now won’t it be a shock,
If your grand-kids never ever get to stumble on a rock.

We must cut no more old growth trees for wood, we’d better have a care,
They thin ’em out, those big birds spot our pot fields from the air.
You think that you got trouble partner, troubles you ain’t got
Till you get a couple dozen Pterodactyls high on pot.

“Okay,” the chairman told them, “now then you all hit the street,
And harass all the working men and women that you meet.
And tell ’em all that if their sinful ways they don’t abort,
We’re gonna merge with the Sierra Club and yard ’em into court.”

So now the modern EPA is quick to holler “Foul”
The loggers and the ranchers are killing off our spotted owl.
It takes three thousand acres for the little beggar’s nest
I think we oughta let ’em propagate, let’s close the whole Northwest.

But the EPA might be surprised ’cause this bird if he must
Would be just like the coyote and I’m sure that he’d adjust.
When he moved down into the second growth this hardy little guy
Would find himself much closer to his “mousy food supply.”

And that would be so handy for our little feathered cousin
That instead of having just one egg, he’d probably lay a dozen.
So then in just a decade why they would be so blasted thick,
You could stand out on your patio and whomp ’em with a stick.

’Course surely then the Greenies would set up another howl.
They’d say “We gotta put a bounty on that blasted Spotted Owl.
We’ve got to cut their numbers back or what will be the price?
The filthy little varmint is endangering our mice.”

The appetite those buggers have would drive a man to drink.
Boys, the world won’t last a month if all the mice become extinct.
But if there is one species in this whole wide world around,
That for the good of humankind must be extinction bound,

The one that most folks I know would put highest on their list
Is that large-mouthed, loose-lipped bird they call
Environ-mental-ist.

 

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