The Flower that ate Brenda
A song by Carson Thorpe
The flower that ate Brenda was a mighty sight to see
Hundreds of feet tall and colored up real pretty
It blotted out the sun for miles and miles around
Deep its roots were hidden far beneath the ground
Brenda was a mining town, salt was its game
Not a fancy place, nor a famous one, just a little tame
One night, without remark, a tumbleseed rolled into town
And in that night it grew and grew and ate everything around
Flowers, plants and animals, seeds, corn and grain
Even the residents of poor Brenda were not spared the pain
Only one escaped to tell the tale of the doom that came that night
Fled she did to east, find out what happened was our heroes plight
The flower that ate Brenda was a mighty sight to see
Hundreds of feet tall and colored up real pretty
It blotted out the sun for miles and miles around
Deep its roots were hidden far beneath the ground
So across the desert sands did they trek, led by an old Navaho hunter
Their trail was straight and true and the town had changed but not for the better
Brown lumps and pods and flowers everywhere and worst yet it was growing
Fighting it proved useless and so a new plan was a-chosen
The cunning trickster said “let’s make a dam high above the town and then flood it would
Picking up the salt that the doomed had mined with their own hands could work or should”
When the time was right they blew apart the dam
And poisoned salty water flooded across the land
The flowers did they shrivel, the leaves did they wither and the roots they did die
The town finally laid to rest; many tears flowed from the adventurers eyes
Twas then the old Navaho who noticed the track coming into town
That the lonesome tumbleseed did make when it brought everything down
Tracking that lonesome tumbleseed across the desert was a desperate thing
But they had to know from whence came such a threat to all living beings
Rounding a rocky mountain they saw from whence the tumbleseed came
And some fell to their knees looking up at the garden of hell to give it a name
High up on a plateau stood dozens of flowers, each one hundreds of feet tall
Stalks like redwood trees with petals stretching across the sky and seeds which did fall
The tumbleseeds then rolled across the desert, leaving their tracks in wasted sands
Most died of thirst, thankfully, except for the one that ate Brenda and her surrounding lands
Tentatively did our heroes venture into that garden, only to find an old Biolab hidden in the roots
Down they went into the earth, careful to avoid the wandering plants to make their presence moot
Vats feed the flowers strange fluids and prompted their growth and bizarre size
And deeper still danger signs surround a series of pipes and levers, nuclear they realized
Most of the party departed to find a safe place, leaving one brave rifleman to do his worst
Pulling the levers marked not to pull, the pipes he knew would soon burst
So he made haste to escape that place, he let no trinkets or baubles tarry his pace
Down the mountain and across the desert did our heroes race
Just in time they found a place to hunker down and watch the sights as the nuclear plant crowned
Lighting up the sky for hundreds of miles, for a giant mushroom had brought the flowers down
Thunder and quakes did shake the earth and sky with a massive firestorm raging into the night
All the plants burned that night and there were no more flowers to be found by the morning’s light
The flower that ate Brenda was a mighty sight to see
Hundreds of feet tall and colored up real pretty
It blotted out the sun for miles and miles around
Deep its roots were hidden far beneath the ground
However, a least one tumbleseed did escape they say
But that my dear friends, is a story for another day