BEASTLY TALES

MOTHER’S BOY

Algernon Quisling was a robust boy,
He was, indeed, his mother’s pride and joy!
One day, while hiking across country fells,
He thought he heard the sound of tinkling cow bells.
Looking around, he soon perceived a large herd.
Chomping away, on that grass they preferred.
Thought Algernon, scratching his sizeable butt,
“I wonder if a bull might be amongst them, to rut?”
Seeing none from afar, he walked over, the closer to get.
And noticed one herbivore to be larger, and yet,
He still couldn’t see if it might be a bull,
And, indeed, he was starting to feel a bit of a fool.

“I must turn on my heel, and proceed on my way.”
“This I shall do now, this self-same day.”
Hearing a loud puffing, snorting sound,
Quickly he decided to turn right around.
And there, horror of horrors, a bull scraping the grass!
With it’s front hooves, to charge him, not pass.
Now, Algernon emitted a squeal of alarm,
But, deep down, he knew he must keep calm.
Cleverly, he ran back to the herd,
Hoping to hide, his bull meeting deferred!
He squeezed himself between grazing cows,
Anyone watching would surely raise eyebrows.
The bull, perplexed, walked up and down, near the herd.
Ready to charge, if anything stirred.
Algernon, crawling between legs, towards the fence,
Knew that this fence was his only defence.
On reaching this protective perimeter
He squeezed through barbed wire, that bull charge cheater.

Algernon was now sitting under a hedge,
Not to return to the next field he did readily pledge.
But wait, what’s this, under a slight incline?
He had inadvertently sat on a porcupine!
Extricating himself from the hedge line,
He felt numerous quills in his butt, from the porcupine.
Algernon now thought it might be time to go home,
He had acquired quills in his butt, and fears in his dome.
What would his mother say, when she spotted the quills?
His mother wasn’t known for tolerating dills.

His mother was, indeed, most alarmed,
Seeing those quills in her darling’s butt harmed.
“We’d better go to see Doctor Lex Tractum,”
“He’ll have surgical pliers to extract them.”
She now drove Algernon quickly into town.
At the doctors surgery they turned him upside down,
Upon that awful doctor’s couch
Two nurses held him there, no slouch.
The doctor was pulling, one by one.
Smirking broadly, “Oh what fun!”
Algernon squirmed about, “Ow! That hurts,”
The doctor giggled, “Especially for little squirts.”
“Little squirts that break the rules,”
“Little squirts that act darned fools!”
“Here we go, the last one’s coming out!”
“For goodness sake, hold still, don’t squirm about!”
The doctor pulled and out it came,
Then they heard that man exclaim,
“Now let us see the cost, we don’t want to fleece,”
“Ten quills at ten pounds a piece,”
“That’ll be one hundred pounds at least.”
Algernon’s mother gasped out aloud.
“By George, you do yourself most proud!”
“It’s not expensive,” replied Doctor Tractum,
“For foreign objects, to extract them.”
“Think for a moment what your son’s plight might be,”
“As he endeavoured to sit down for tea.”
“His condition would have impaired locomotion.”
“And made it virtually impossible to pass a motion.”
“So the list would go on and on,”
“But inapplicable, now they’ve all gone.”
“So your son can rest in peace,”
“Without any need for him to decease!”