Below the grassy surface of a hillock,
in a dark and dankish crayfish cellar,
stood a cage with one bird in it.
Minute after boring minute,
hour after day,
she watched the crayfish vats
and wondered why fish looked
as odd as they,
and why they called them cray.

It comes from Middle French crevis,
an elderly acquaintance
in the corner told her,
though French is not my field of expertise.
Then, getting bolder,
he went on, But tell me why
you call yourself an alligator bird,
a name I've never heard.

Replied the bird,
It's a question of poetic meter;
alligator bird sounds neater
than crocodile bird,
a/k/a African plover,
which is what I really am,
my species no doubt smuggled over.
But that name, like the one
my mother gave me,
is poetically unscannable.

And what might that name be?

She called me Annabel,
Annabel Lee, a bunch
of syllables and stresses
useless to an honest poet.

How well I know it, sighed the man,
and how often I’ve despaired
at having my name and addresses,
PhD and MS's poetically impaired.
My name, you see, is J.A. Prufrock,
and I'm a homeless ornithologist.

At this, the alligator bird,
tipping one eye toward the corner,
asked him was he sleeping there on gunny
'cause he'd lost his job and money?

Just so, said he.
As wing-ed species go extinct
there's less work for the likes of me,
whose specialty
is birdies having vital signs.
When pulse and breathing go away
I find I've nothing more to say.
It's at such times
an honest ornithologist resigns.

The captive bird let out a sigh.
It's good to hear
that somewhere out there
honesty's alive and kicking;
the evil croc who put me in this cage
deserves a licking.

Dr. Prufrock could not believe his ears.
You say a croc is holding you?
A crocodile?
A beast that lives one hundred years,
that grows nine meters long,
and has a jaw so strong and big
that it can down a full-sized pig?

That's right, the bird replied,
that's Crockafeller to a T,
a croc as mean as mean can be,
and big as he is mean.

Then, panicked by a mortal dread,
J.A. Prufrock said,
I-better-leave-before-I'm-seen.