Crockafeller, sitting on his hillock,
studied his reflection in his private pool,
drew back his lips, wrinkled up his snout,
and seeing he was getting
longer in the tooth, stuck his tongue out
at his wrinkled image.

Ha! Only yesterday
had he been challenged to
a pecking-order scrimmage
by some macho whipper snapper.

No problemo!
He was still top croc
and would remain so.
Boss of Swamptown and all southern YO,
he'd sent that poor swain
packing. For, you see,
a croc as top as he
had no need himself to tussle,
could instead call in some hired muscle,
as Crockafeller always did
when needing to protect his hustle.

But on this date
more urgent business filled his plate.
Like whom to hire -
which charismatic, brain-dead crocoliar -
as congressional-committee
expert witness, to fulminate against
each piece of pro-environmental legislation
that might endanger
all the perfectly regressive
tolls, taxations, and assessments
that he personally levied
on inhabitants of every
marsh and morass,
bog, ditch, dike, and shoal
within his purview and control?

Who send to Washington
to advocate his cause?
His eye of course was on young Rock,
exactly the right croc
to play the prince to
Crockafeller's Machiavelli,
one problem being unconfirmed reports
that some conservation wonks
imagined Rockadial to be a new god-king -
an avatar of sorts -
a crocodalailama of the region's underbelly.

This discovery,
inspired by young Rockadial's
miraculous recovery from coma,
and the length, strength,
and potential flick of his prodigious tail,
appeared to make him qualified to rule.
Plus, there was the finding
of auspicious flotsam in his stool
when he was sick,
stuff rumored to be grail,
and scepter,
and guitar pick.