1pheas4
Moderator
You Pheasant……
You ornery, yaller-eyed heathen Chinee!
Who ever said you were a game bird?
Not the quail hunter, for you insult his dogs.
Not the pa’tridg hunter, for you scorn his forests.
The turkey hunter can’t talk your heathen lingo
And the dove hunter says you fly like a plowhorse.
You’re a brass-bound, hell-for-leather, unblushing roughneck
And that’s a fact!
You’re shingled with galvanished feathers
And you spout cusswords when you fly.
You run a good bird dog all forenoon to work up an appetite
And likely eat the dog for lunch.
You’d spur the devil himself,
And when you’re killed you’re too mean to die.
You’re even too mean for decent bird country.
You favor summers that raise feverblisters on rawhide.
And winters that jell your cussedness at forty below.
You get fat on a ration of bobwire and blizzard.
Why, you’re no game bird………
You’re a cross between a cottonwood staub and a Dakota just-devil.
But out here in corn country where we’ve plowed under the prairie chickens
And planted eighty million acres of cash grain,
What other birds will put up with us?
You’re about all we’ve got.
And we reckon that you’re all we need!
(peter Roberston, PHEASANTS pg. 9)
You ornery, yaller-eyed heathen Chinee!
Who ever said you were a game bird?
Not the quail hunter, for you insult his dogs.
Not the pa’tridg hunter, for you scorn his forests.
The turkey hunter can’t talk your heathen lingo
And the dove hunter says you fly like a plowhorse.
You’re a brass-bound, hell-for-leather, unblushing roughneck
And that’s a fact!
You’re shingled with galvanished feathers
And you spout cusswords when you fly.
You run a good bird dog all forenoon to work up an appetite
And likely eat the dog for lunch.
You’d spur the devil himself,
And when you’re killed you’re too mean to die.
You’re even too mean for decent bird country.
You favor summers that raise feverblisters on rawhide.
And winters that jell your cussedness at forty below.
You get fat on a ration of bobwire and blizzard.
Why, you’re no game bird………
You’re a cross between a cottonwood staub and a Dakota just-devil.
But out here in corn country where we’ve plowed under the prairie chickens
And planted eighty million acres of cash grain,
What other birds will put up with us?
You’re about all we’ve got.
And we reckon that you’re all we need!
(peter Roberston, PHEASANTS pg. 9)
