Artistic Challenge Poem

[click on picture for larger view]

[source:  http://news.msn.com/us/weaker-hurricane-arthur-heads-to-nantucket-cape-cod]

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Our Ocracoke Pests

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Little island next to the sea

Harbor for rats and nutrias

Ancestors, when getting was good,

jumped pirate ships ages ago

and left tendered slave ships by droves

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Nutria feast on trees and shrubs

Rats, vermin in any language,

carry fleas and lice and disease

As if protected by law, they--

have run of the place, dreaded pests

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Nutria run and hide, won't bite

Rats, omnivorous by nature,

their bite will surely make one sick

They're looting abandoned houses--

owners away from surging seas

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Wish we could send them far away

Perhaps up to New York City 

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 - - - - - .  ....

Picture and Poem Copyright, © 2014 Jimmiehov, All Rights Reserved.

[Picture is 'screen print' of the link show below the picture]

 

Today I'm linked with Margaret at the Real Toads, Artistic Interpretations

And now again Monday with Kerry at the Real Toads, Open Link Monday

 

Margaret's instructions were: "For July's challenge, I ask you to bring a character or characters to life in a poem based on the images in these photos.   It can be in any style and manner you wish.  It may have dialogue or be purely meditative, it may be fictional or non-fictional." 

[My post here as I figuratively wrote for the residents of Ocracoke is mostly fictional and except for the title could relate to most any of the islands off the east coast of North Carolina.  But the hurricane did pass right over Ocracoke as told by the MSN News article at the picture credit link below my screen capture picture.]
Notes: 
1.  Not all vermin are rodents but can be another name for human scum of the earth.  These type of vermin (humans) also loot abandoned housing.  [Thought attributed to Webster: "a person whose behavior is offensive to others vermin who looted abandoned houses after the hurricane" (link)] 
2.  The nutria are called  by the Ocracoke people.  Margaret said, "Russian Rat - a large rodent found on Ocracoke.  Technically known as a nutria.  We have lots of Russian rats and mink on the island." 
Here, where we live there are also a lot of the nutria.  All the trees down by the lake have to have mesh screen around their bases to protect the bark from the nutria nibbles.

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