ja_mageia

By David Berman © 2009

I’m a rabbit and I scurry because I’m in a hurry

I’m heading to a party in the cool, warren by the creek

Right across Australia we are celebrating failure

Of eradication methods that the humans (desperately) seek

I’m a farmer in a hurry, but I’ll get there don’t you worry

I’m running late for a party at the local show

To celebrate our (farms) survival since the rabbit’s first arrival

One hundred and fifty years ago

I’m a rabbit under piles of logs, avoiding eagles and wild dogs

Diving into burrows, built by bilbies years ago.

There lives my second cousins, they’ve had kittens (baby rabbits) by the dozens.

But!! Where the bilbies went to, we don’t really know.

I’m a farmer and I’m driving, through my country that I’m striving

To stop the bank from taking because I can’t pay the loan

We struggled through the drought and there’s very little doubt

Rabbits helped us almost lose everything we own

I’m a rabbit eating seedlings, in between the poisonous weedlings

The parent tree is dying, full of mistletoe

Seedlings are so very nice, but they can not be eaten twice

I wonder when the tree will flower, and make more seeds to grow

I’m a farmer in me ute done up in me tie and suit

Driving through the new estates on the edge of town

Once precious cultivation growing food for the nation

Now just houses fences concrete and tared roads up and down

I’m a rabbit and I found there wasn’t any sound

At the party at the creek, party noises should be loud

No open active burrows, just loose dirt and long furrows

The deep, cool creek warren had been ploughed

I’m a farmer feeling hearty as I left the celebration party

I had a real good time, a bit tipsy, had a few

Drivin slowly home across the creek flat sandy loam

I saw a blurry rabbit in fact it looked like two

I’m a rabbit and I scurry because I’m in a hurry

Running from a roaring ute with headlights on high beam

Running off the side of the track behind a tree to hide

The ute close behind crashing, steam!!!

The radiators split and the bonnets bent a bit

And the rabbits sitting looking at me ute

Loud I starts to shout, “I’ll get you”!! I scrambles out

Bloody nose and starts off after the rabbit in me suit!

I’m a rabbit and I scurry, because I’m in a hurry,

Running from the farmer who stops to have a leak

Running to the rocky hill where I know there is a burrow still

Running from the shouting near the ripped warren by the creek