I took young Cora to the zoo,
For she had never been
It seemed to me the thing to do
Since she had never seen
A hippo or a crocodile
Or even a giraffe
Nor caught a python’s winsome smile
Nor heard a baboon’s sweet laugh
Cora Conn was quite impressed
With the elephant’s toenail
And the way the penguin dressed
In starched white shirt and tail.
She liked a lot the long-plumed birds
It didn’t take her long
To translate into human words
The meaning of their song
Cora Conn is very smart
And soon she had a chat
On the finer points of abstract art
With a friendly jungle cat.
Then in the heat of hot debate
On what life is all about
With a philosophical primate
The ape said, “let me out.”
So Cora claims, and I hesitate
To say her words are bunk
’Cause Cora always tells it straight
And I cannot speak monk.
With a piece of wire Cora found
She unlocked the monkey cage
And off they went with a spring and a bound
Which made the keeper rage.
He had a scowl upon his face,
His anger was quite plain
He ordered Cora to leave the place
And not come back again
Cora’s trouble is she knows
Much more thanother folk
Like when Santa does his ho-ho-hos
Only Cora gets the joke
It’s not that easy being bright
In fact, it’s pretty rough
Nobody ever thinks you’re right
When you tell them real smart stuff
I said, “Here’s your chance to show you’re sage
Just use that monkey lingo
To get the apes back in the cage
And then they’d know, by jingo.”
Well, Cora did not wait
She wandered over far and wide
To find each peregrinating primate
And get all back inside
Chattering chimp and muttering monk
And babbling baboon, too,
She persuaded every long-armed lunk
To go back to the zoo
All but one, a big brown ape
With a huge and ugly head,
The one who’d planned the whole escape
“You’ll never catch me,” he said.
But when Cora thinks, there is no doubt
She’ll come up with a plan
“Too bad, I guess you’ll just miss out
On the tea and jam, my man.”
Now apes, she knew, or so she said,
Though rough and awful hairy,
Love to have some bread and spread,
And their favorite jam is cherry
And all the time I’d always thought
Bananas were their deal
But Cora said they’re simply not,
Jam’s got more appeal
The beast began to pace a lot
His hands commencedto quaver
When Cora said the jam they’d got
was the big ape’s favorite flavour
But the final thing that won the day
And put the ape back under key
Was when Cora said: “Oh, by the way,
We’re serving Earl Grey tea”
As Cora promised, no expense was spared
For the party in the primates’ cage
And, amazed, the papers all declared
It was the social season’s rage
Now I cannot swear it was this way
But Cora says it’s so
Cora’s Zoo AdventureAnd she told me the very next day
So I thought I’d let you know.