Poem: "Snappy Action"
Jul. 30th, 2014 05:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis poem is spillover from the June 3, 2014 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from rosieknight. It also fills the "first person narration" square in my 6-1-14 card for the ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
genprompt_bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by Anthony & Shirley Barrette. It belongs to the Polychrome Heroics series.
By the way, this was my mother's favorite poem of the last batch I sent them; she said it made her laugh. We have some family stories about snapping turtles. My grandmother got chased by one. Honestly, I probably would have skedaddled too.
"Snappy Action"
At first it was funny when
we found the snapping turtle
in the little employee park
behind our factory.
It got strange when she
started climbing up
the chain-link fence
to get back to the pond
where the wastewater collected.
We all laughed
when she fell off the fence.
Duke just had to go over
and poke her with a stick.
She hissed at him
and bit the stick in half.
It was a two-inch-thick stick.
Then she started chewing
on the chain-link fence.
Tink.
Plink.
She was cutting through the metal
as if her jaws were wire snips.
"Okay," I said, as I
backed slowly away
from the super-turtle.
"It's time to call SPOON."
* * *
Notes:
Ironsides -- She is a Common Snapping Turtle, about 20 inches from nose to tail tip. Rescued from a factory pond, she is now the mascot for the SPOON base in Easy City. She lives in their rain garden full of brightly colored plants.
Super-Durability means she is tougher than most things around her, so she can bite through wires, and she has survived having a truck backed over her. Super-Intellect for a reptile with a small brain means she's about as smart as an ordinary dog, so she can figure out simple puzzles and is difficult to contain. Super-Strength is not as much as a human's, but she can dig through concrete or lift fallen logs. She is smart and strong enough to climb or chew through most fences. Also she once bit the forefinger off a supervillain who teased her. Yeah, that's on YouTube.
Origin: Hatched in a polluted pond full of runoff from a Louisiana factory.
Qualities: Master (+6) Snapping Turtle, Good (+2) Agility
Powers: Average (0) Super-Durability, Average (0) Super-Intellect, Average (0) Super-Strength
* * *
Ironsides is a common snapping turtle, one of Louisiana's native reptiles. If you're surprised by the smooth shell, you're thinking of alligator snappers, a distantly related species.
Factory pollution is a serious problem with many negative effects. In Terramagne, mysterious chemicals form one of the commoner causes of superpowers. There are ways to prevent pollution and things you can do to fight it.
Animals can be quite smart and many excel at solving puzzles. Chimpanzees, like humans, may solve puzzles just for the fun of it. Some reptiles show complex and flexible behavior too.
rosieknight. It also fills the "first person narration" square in my 6-1-14 card for the genprompt_bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by Anthony & Shirley Barrette. It belongs to the Polychrome Heroics series.By the way, this was my mother's favorite poem of the last batch I sent them; she said it made her laugh. We have some family stories about snapping turtles. My grandmother got chased by one. Honestly, I probably would have skedaddled too.
"Snappy Action"
At first it was funny when
we found the snapping turtle
in the little employee park
behind our factory.
It got strange when she
started climbing up
the chain-link fence
to get back to the pond
where the wastewater collected.
We all laughed
when she fell off the fence.
Duke just had to go over
and poke her with a stick.
She hissed at him
and bit the stick in half.
It was a two-inch-thick stick.
Then she started chewing
on the chain-link fence.
Tink.
Plink.
She was cutting through the metal
as if her jaws were wire snips.
"Okay," I said, as I
backed slowly away
from the super-turtle.
"It's time to call SPOON."
* * *
Notes:
Ironsides -- She is a Common Snapping Turtle, about 20 inches from nose to tail tip. Rescued from a factory pond, she is now the mascot for the SPOON base in Easy City. She lives in their rain garden full of brightly colored plants.
Super-Durability means she is tougher than most things around her, so she can bite through wires, and she has survived having a truck backed over her. Super-Intellect for a reptile with a small brain means she's about as smart as an ordinary dog, so she can figure out simple puzzles and is difficult to contain. Super-Strength is not as much as a human's, but she can dig through concrete or lift fallen logs. She is smart and strong enough to climb or chew through most fences. Also she once bit the forefinger off a supervillain who teased her. Yeah, that's on YouTube.
Origin: Hatched in a polluted pond full of runoff from a Louisiana factory.
Qualities: Master (+6) Snapping Turtle, Good (+2) Agility
Powers: Average (0) Super-Durability, Average (0) Super-Intellect, Average (0) Super-Strength
* * *
Ironsides is a common snapping turtle, one of Louisiana's native reptiles. If you're surprised by the smooth shell, you're thinking of alligator snappers, a distantly related species.
Factory pollution is a serious problem with many negative effects. In Terramagne, mysterious chemicals form one of the commoner causes of superpowers. There are ways to prevent pollution and things you can do to fight it.
Animals can be quite smart and many excel at solving puzzles. Chimpanzees, like humans, may solve puzzles just for the fun of it. Some reptiles show complex and flexible behavior too.
Re: Thank you!
Date: 2014-08-02 08:28 am (UTC)Feel free to prompt for it. As for the mascot thing, well, they didn't feel it would be safe to let her go, and people got kind of attached.