#84: July 16, 2006

I'd never before held a blue-tongued skink
Till last summer at the new petting zoo.
No one told me how much the thing could stink,
Nor, if it should start pissing, what to do.

So I stood still a moment, paralyzed,
With warm lizard piss dribbling down my wrist,
While the zookeeper, not at all surprised,
Just smirked at me. I was, in a word, pissed.

And then this rank reptile--I swear to God!
Clucked its blue-tongue and sighed, "Ain't that the way?"
His keeper didn't seem to think this odd...
And so I left, with nothing more to say.

I never darkened that zoo's door again;
But I still have the nightmares--and the stain.