My Brother Bert

                 My Brother Bert

Pets are the hobby of my brother Bert.

He used to go to school with a mouse in his shirt.

His hobby it grew, as some hobbies will,

and grew, and GREW and GREW until --

Oh don't breathe a word, pretend you haven't heard.

A simply appalling thing has occurred --

The very thought makes me iller and iller:

Bert's brought home a gigantic gorilla!

If you think that's really not such a scare,

What if it quarrels with his grizzly bear?

You still think you could keep your head?

What if the lion from under the bed

And the four ostriches that deposit

Their football eggs in his bedroom closet

And the aardvark out of his bottom drawer

All danced out and joined in the roar?

What if the pangolins were to caper

Out of their nests behind the wallpaper?

With the fifty sorts of bats

That hang on his hatstand like old hats,

And out of a shoebox the excitable platypus

Along with the ocelot or jungle-cattypus?

The wombat, the dingo, the gecko, the grumpus --

How they would shake the house with their rumpus!

Not to forget the bandicoot

Who would certainly peer from his battered old boot.

Why it could be a dreadful day,

And what, oh what, would the neighbors say?!