Garbage Chooks
Submitted by Chickowee on 04 Jun 2017.
The following verse by Geoff Ryan appeared on the Birding-Aus email list on 3 June 2017 in response to multiple postings on the topic of "garbage chooks" - the birds that make it their business to hang around garbage landfills. The posts started with the query "How many species of dump chook are there in Australia?"
GARBAGE CHOOKS
With scorn ye call us Garbage Chooks
A monicker fallacious
For if ye examine your abuse
Ye'll find it quite mendacious.
It is your ilk, the plaguing ape
Whose actions are obscene
Destroying fruit-filled forests
And grassy lands serene
Replacing all with ugliness
Your sterile roads and nests
Which suffocate all other life
With choking air and pests.
And by your selfish actions
From mountains to the sea
Our habitats consumed, destroyed
To boost your GDP.
We may be forced to eat your trash
Through circumstance or need
The excess of your selfishness
Extravagance and greed
Yet we maintain our dignity
Our beauty's not reduced
Not blighted by obesity
Nor scarred by drug abuse.
We come from ancient lineage
Thirty million years around
Our ancestors have enjoyed this world
With not one garbage mound
Whilst your ilk have left their scars
For a million years or less
New comers to this planet
You've created quite a mess.
So before you use derogatory
One fact we must attest
Its not your filthy garbage dumps
Where the Pelican builds its nest.
*Geoff Ryan *
