The African Pangolin

The Chinese scourge of
traditional Chinese Medicine
Is hoovering up
Our endangered species fast
The pangolin that has roamed
The earth some 80 million years
Is coming under fire like crazy
and so many tears
Are falling from ecologists
They all study them and see how beautiful
and unique they are
Amazing dears they be

Unbelievable hands as ancient All can see
But really very effective
At walking which is key
On two main legs tipping to the front
That’s what they do
Termite eggs and termites and ants
They love to view
All sorts using their long tongue
And swallow them like crazy
Hundreds of them eaten fast
You can’t say they are lazy
They move a long way every day
Tracking them is hard
And if they sense some danger
The curl up that’s their guard

Poachers working
for the Chinese Medicine Brigade
Murderers no hearts at all
They buy sacks all weighed
out
In scales alone so many
animals hit the dust
These Nocturnal phantoms
Their future is now bust

It’s Seriously endangered
Clearly designed to be
Their whole makeup just spins
Out of control And we can see
That’s how they get away
That kind of puts their back up fast
and they hobble on their way it seems
For them life is a blast

With exceptionally scaly bodies
Which are ground up into dust
Made into the compressed pills
Which surely must disgust
The Chinese their long history
GAve us professors who
Are about as thick as any brick
Remedially now that’s true

The need for us to stop this
Trade in bush meat right Way
To stop buying into bushmeat
Can’t the Chinese find a way
The flesh is very costly
The scales can be cracked too
And running in the open
With a picture of you two
Would be rather dangerous
Really for kingdom come
Africa is sighing
Watching the Chinese scrum

The smoking and the boiling
And the scales bagged up and sent
And all for some fangled illness
That might somewhere have meant
The backward population
Sold in China to this day
Which Accounts for all this carnage
And why pangolins have to pay