The Hurkle is a happy beast
Who strikes endearing poses.
He has three heads, a dozen eyes,
And six assorted noses.
His furry tongue is five feet long,
The colour of tobacco,
But when it’s stretched, can almost reach
The constellation Draco.
He’s fond of children, adults too,
And sings to them divinely.
He helps old ladies cross the street
And pats their heads benignly;
His dress is somewhat dandyish,
Bewigged, befrocked and bodiced;
His eating habits usually
Are admirably modest.
But after dieting for Lent,
Grown ravenously thinner,
He’ll gladly munch your kids for lunch,
And gobble you for dinner.
A note about the Hurkle’s tongue:
Normally, when at rest, it is about five feet long.
But its almost infinite elasticity has enabled the
Hurkles to devise a very effective form of
interstellar travel. Having identified a likely planet,
a Hurkle shoots out its tongue and anchors it to
a solid object like a rock or tree on the chosen planet.
Then, simply by contracting the muscles of its tongue,
the Hurkle's body is whisked through space to rejoin
the pioneering organ. That is how there came to be
so many Hurkles on the Earth.
N.B. For more on the Hurkle and other beasts
see the recent News item Allgar's Alphabetical
Adventures.(Ed)