A True Tale
“Can such things be and overcome us like a summer cloud, without our special wonder.”
In a grocery store in Ingersoll our attention was called to a copper-headed snake wriggling in a glass jar. We noticed a peculiarity about its head, but soon found out it was a potato bug, which was afraid of being drowned; and the only above water being the snake’s head and neck, it was fondly clinging thereto. There being “no jutty-frieze buttress or coigne of vantage, where it could make its pendant bed, elsewhere.”
Some poets they abroad do roam,
But we find themes are near to home;
As we do seldom travel far,
This is a song of a glass jar.
Snake of species of the copper,
And on its head there was live hopper,
For we saw that funny sight
In a store, it was last night.
There in water was a snake,
And a bug so wide awake;
He was afraid that he would drown
So he clomb up on the snake’s crown.
This snake it is near a foot long,
Which doth suffer this great wrong,
It thinks the bug wants it to throttle
This makes it wriggle in the bottle.
But fondly the kind hearted bug,
It doth its preserver hug,
For the bug when on the water
It is only but a squatter.
And hath taken up homestead
On the top of the snake’s head,
And on the waters it doth float
Safe and happy on this boat.