---

Banjo Paterson - A Ballad of Ducks
Work rating: Low

The railway rattled and roared and swung
With jolting and bumping trucks.
The sun, like a billiard red ball, hung
In the Western sky: and the tireless tongue
Of the wild-eyed man in the corner told
This terrible tale of the days of old,
And the party that ought to have kept the ducks.

"Well, it ain`t all joy bein` on the land
With an overdraft that`d knock you flat;
And the rabbits have pretty well took command;
But the hardest thing for a man to stand
Is the feller who says `Well I told you so!
You should ha` done this way, don`t you know!` —
I could lay a bait for a man like that.

"The grasshoppers struck us in ninety-one
And what they leave — well, it ain`t de luxe.
But a growlin` fault-findin` son of a gun
Who`d lent some money to stock our run —
I said they`d eaten what grass we had —
Says he, `Your management`s very bad;
You had a right to have kept some ducks!`

"To have kept some ducks! And the place was white!
Wherever you went you had to tread
On grasshoppers guzzlin` day and night;
And then with a swoosh they rose in flight,
If you didn`t look out for yourself they`d fly
Like bullets into your open eye
And knock it out of the back of your head.

"There isn`t a turkey or goose or swan,
Or a duck that quacks, or a hen that clucks,
Can make a difference on a run
When a grasshopper plague has once begun;
`If you`d finance us,` I says, `I`d buy
Ten thousand emus and have a try;
The job,` I says, `is too big for ducks!

"`You must fetch a duck when you come to stay;
A great big duck — a Muscovy toff —
Ready and fit,` I says, `for the fray;
And if the grasshoppers come our way
You turn your duck into the lucerne patch,
And I`d be ready to make a match
That the grasshoppers eat his feathers off!"

"He came to visit us by and by,
And it just so happened one day in spring
A kind of cloud came over the sky —
A wall of grasshoppers nine miles high,
And nine miles thick, and nine hundred wide,
Flyin` in regiments, side by side,
And eatin` up every living thing.

"All day long, like a shower of rain,
You`d hear `em smackin` against the wall,
Tap, tap, tap, on the window pane,
And they`d rise and jump at the house again
Till their crippled carcasses piled outside.
But what did it matter if thousands died —
A million wouldn`t be missed at all.

"We were drinkin` grasshoppers — so to speak —
Till we skimmed their carcasses off the spring;
And they fell so thick in the station creek
They choked the waterholes all the week.
There was scarcely room for a trout to rise,
And they`d only take artificial flies —
They got so sick of the real thing.

"An Arctic snowstorm was beat to rags
When the hoppers rose for their morning flight
With the flapping noise like a million flags:
And the kitchen chimney was stuffed with bags
For they`d fall right into the fire, and fry
Till the cook sat down and began to cry —
And never a duck or fowl in sight.

"We strolled across to the railroad track —
Under a cover beneath some trucks,
I sees a feather and hears a quack;
I stoops and I pulls the tarpaulin back —
Every duck in the place was there,
No good to them was the open air.
`Mister,` I says, `There`s your blanky ducks!`"
Source
The script ran 0.001 seconds.