PTSW: The Scat Rap

I was with storyteller Doug Elliott last October at the Hagood Mill Storytelling Festival in Pickens, SC.

Doug performing at Hagood Mill (with sign language interpreter)

I posted a little peice of this rap earlier today in my post about "Perseverance". So it popped into my mind that I'd like to learn the song for my Arrowhead storytelling. I've heard a storyteller favorite of mine, Doug Elliott, do this rap several times. Doug helped several others write it.  And I have his CD that includes it. When I grow up I want to know as much as Doug about our environment. 

Well, Mr. Google is my friend so I consulted him and, sure enough, the Adirondack Naturalist had blogged about it and posted the lyrics. Here they are as my "Poem To Start the Week":

Scat Rap
(1988, Andy Bennett, Mary Keebler, Rodd Pemble, Doug Elliott, Billy Jonas)

Chorus:
It starts with an “s” and it ends with a “t”
It comes out of you and comes out of me
I know what you’re thinking, you can call it that
But let’s be scientific and call it scat.

Verses:
You’re walking through the woods and your nose goes “ooooo”
Must be some critter’s scat’s near you
It may seem gross but it’s okay
They ain’t got no place to flush it away.

Down the trail something’s lying on the ground
Nature’s tootsie roll all long ad brown
Don’t wrinkle your nose, don’t lose your lunch
Break it apart, you might learn a bunch
Don’t use your fingers, use a stick
Keep it sanitary now that’s the trick

If you wanna find out what animals eat
Take a good look at what they excrete
Stuck in the scat are all kinds of clues
Parts of the food their bodies can’t use
Like bones and fur (2x)
Hard berries and seeds (2x)
Crawfish shells, ouch! (2x)
Grass fibers and weeds (2x)

Possum up in a ‘simmon tree
Eating all the ‘simmons he could see
Backed his butt into the weeds
His scat was nothing but ‘simmon seeds

Down by the creek on a hollow log
Scat full of berries and bones of a frog
Late last night he was out with the moon
Wading in the creek it was Mr. Raccoon

You’re driving your car by a woods or a field
Scat goes splat on your windshield
It’s full of seeds, all purple and white
You just got bombed by a bird in flight


Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold
Scat on the trail two minutes old
Two minutes old, is this a joke?
No, it’s still warm, look at it smoke
Cat scat, rat scat, bat scat, too
All god’s chillum do scat a lot, too

Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold
Scat in the woodlot nine days old
Nine days old, how can you tell?
Getting kinda dry and not much smell
Dog doo, frog doo, hog doo, too
All god’s chillum do a doodley do

Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold
Scat in a cave 1000 years old
1000 years old, could that be right?
Sure that’s no jive: petrified copralite
Mole scat, vole scat, bear scat more
There’s so darn many kinds of spoor

Sneaking through the woods be quiet now, shish!
Take a quiet step – something goes squish
Don’t put it in your mouth, it ain’t delish
Let’s put some in a Petri dish
Look through a microscope, what do you see?
Microscopic organisms 1, 2, 3
Bacillus, streptococcus, and E. coli
They eat scat and then they die
Don’t you worry, no need to cry
They ain’t that different from you and I

If you want to know who was out and around
Take a long hard look at the scat on the ground
It tells us what they eat, tells us who they are
That’s what we know about scat so far

And you can hear Doug Elliott perform the Scat rap here.