Ravindranath the Python had a nasty habit,
Of chewing on creatures, be they man or rabbit.
The other pythons they all thought him mighty strange,
From swallowing whole, chewing was a very weird change.
“We really wouldn’t mind if he’d eat us and be done,
But that gnawing, that chewing, it’s really no fun!
Nibble, nibble, nibble, he starts with the toes,
Then slowly but surely go the feet, knees and nose,
He really is a most disgusting sort,
On jungle society, he’s truly a blot!”
This opinion of him was mostly unanimous,
Except in the case of Harry the Hippopotamus.
Harry suffered from a most violent itch,
Of which she never, ever ceased to bitch.
All day long, she’d stand, doing nothing but bawl,
And of Ravindranath, she really knew nothing at all.
So deep in the jungles so vast and so thick,
These two continued making all thoroughly sick,
One chewing on bodies, the other on minds,
Both inflicting tortures of the most heinous kinds,
Until a cagey old parrot hatched a brilliant plan
That was whole-heartedly approved of by the jungle clan,
A plan to bring together the hippo and the snake,
And wait and see what turn events would take.
How the meeting was effected I really don’t know,
But the events that followed are enough to show,
That the parrot was no bird brain at all,
And the biting menace, away did crawl.
At the first meeting, what happened was this,
Ravindranath was the first to lay eyes on the miss,
His eyes popped open, his tongue rolled out,
He looked like a cartoon then, no doubt.
Cliches aside, he knew right then,
He wanted that hippo, not mice, not men.
“What glorious proportions, what a wonderful expanse,
Of chewable hippo,” he sang and then danced.
With a flex or two of the muscles mandibular,
He slithered and crawled nearer and nearer,
Fully intent on what he thought was his prize,
He omitted to consider the little matter of size.
Ravindranath really was the tiniest titch,
But for Harriet, you’ll see, he’d be the cure for the itch.
He opened those jaws up nice and wide,
And clamped down hard on the hippo’s thick hide.
It’s safe to say it was love at first bite,
A cliché again, but when it’s right, it’s right.
Harry, it turned out, was too big for him to even chew and swallow,
So he could nibble and gnaw and never stop at all-oh!
All through this, one will surely want information,
About how Harry the Hippo treated this jaw-al chewation.
The simple answer to THAT, is this,
Harriet was in a state of immeasurable bliss.
That Ravindranath, he chewed in all the right places,
And soon of her itch, there remained no traces,
And every time a new one did surface,
That spot, Ravindranath would dutifully address,
And if ever Ravindranath felt the pangs of hunger,
Someone would offer themselves up, for now he didn’t linger,
Biting and gnawing, now he had Harry to munch,
And the animals were glad to be his speedy lunch.
Now Harriet wallows in the shallows, covered in big purple blotches,
While the rest of the forest contentedly watches,
One of the greatest love stories ever to be told,
It will touch your heart, make you hot and then cold.
And in the evening’s fading light,
If you listen carefully, then you might,
Hear a soft call, a call of love,
Softer and sweeter than the coo of a dove.
“Wherefore art thou, Ravi-oh?” calls she,
He replies, “Harriet! Harriet! I’m coming to thee!”
