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They called me Skat Skaggins down Broodersville way;
They did, but now they have all moved away,
And I'm here alone with my house locked up tight,
For Fear of those Broodersville hens in the night.
I wanted a chicken that sits still and sings,
With beautiful feathers and gossamer wings;
With no beak to speak of and short toes and claws,
That lay lots of eggs without any flaws.
I wanted chickens for profit and gain,
Prolific hens that live without grain;
Hens eating nothing but sawdust and cobs,
Beetles and bugs, and grubs by the gobs.
So I crossed a leghorn with song birds and more,
With yellow canaries and peacocks galore,
With penguins and ostrich and white snowy owl,
With pigeons and parrots and great laying fowl.
I blended in bluebirds, pink birds, and tan,
And double-crossed in the great pelican.
I figured three months, four at the most,
Till I could be a most gracious host,
And show off my prize-winning hens at the fair,
Displaying the beautiful eggs they would bear.
Finally the day I had planned for did come;
Out hatched my hybrids the size of my thumb!
Skittish and squeamish, as quick as a wink,
They all disappeared twixt a look and a blink.
Down rat holes they scampered, going en masse,
Down cracks in the floor boards, through broke window glass.
I saw them again no more for six weeks;
By then, well, by then, I knew they were freaks.
Something was dreadfully wrong with my hens;
They hid out in holes, hollow trees, and fox dens,
And they came out at night to eat and to scratch;
They ate all the fruit from my raspberry patch!
They stripped all the greens from my yard in their greed,
They left it all bare 'cept for grub and chick weed.
And though eating no grain of corn, oats, or wheat,
They ate about everything else they could eat!
They chewed all the bark from our sycamore trees,
And pecked all our horses to death at their knees!
They multiplied faster than rabbits and hares;
Their eggs they laid by tons in their lairs.
You could knock 'em and sock 'em and hit 'em with stones,
And they wouldn't break, they were harder than bones.
O, they were good quiet birds in the day you could say,
But at night, well, at night they came out to play.
They made such a cacophonous noise,
They awoke all the neighborhood girls and boys;
Cooting and hooting, half cackles, half caws,
Screeching and scratching and whetting their claws.
The looks of them hens is a fright for the eyes,
They have billy goat beards and wings like the flies.
They fly like the buzzards but look more like bats,
As they fly in the night chasing hound dogs and cats.
They have porcupine quills and skin tough as whang,
They are mad as the hornets with beaks like a fang,
And the roosters are worse with their elephant ears;
With their croaking and crowing and wings tipped with spears.
Now I'm locked in my house until I don't know when,
While I cross breed a bird to eat hybrid hen.
I'm mixing the turkeys with eagles and wrens
To dig out those night-flying blood-sucking hens.
And just to make sure they do the job right,
I'm adding woodpeckers and chick-hawks that fight.
If you happen to think they will look most absurd,
For looks I am adding the paradise bird.
Meanwhile I warn you to stay far away,
From these blood-sucking hens down Broodersville way.
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