Dan was a duck in Staffordshire,
not the fastest or the best.
He went to a diner in Paris,
and ordered pheasant from a vest.

‘But that cannot be, monsieur!’
yelled the black, unbuttoned vest.
‘We do not service cannibals,’
it did yell in protest.

Dan the duck was defiant:
‘My own my meal shant be!
A duck and a pheasant are not the same.
I’m only half a cannibal, you see.’

‘I’ve traversed the globe in my time,
sampled the finest in fowl and feather.
But a duck I’ve never eaten,
and could not in any weather.’

‘You had chicken, pigeon and quail?’
The baffled vest asked the duck.
‘Of course,’ said hungry, old Dan.
‘Even emu, just for luck.’

The vest was sated with the duck’s story,
satisfied was he
that he asked the chef to cook
every bird that he could see.

‘it’ll be a treat for Dan!’
the fancy vest decided.
‘He’ll have a feathered feast for free,
and oh, will he be delighted.’

Of course the vest wasn’t so dumb
as to not point out his mate,
to the eager chef who came too close
to putting his head on a plate.

‘The duck by the window, my friend,
the little one with the bow tie,
don’t cook him or kill him or eat him just yet,
he’s just too thin to fry!’

‘Serve him some of our poultry scraps,
we’ll make him nice and round.
When he’s full to bursting,
then we’ll take him down.’

‘He’s a bird who eats his friends,
the strangest kind of guy.
We can cut him up with the cleaver
and serve him in a pie!’

‘Just that duck alone
would make a splendid pie.
His belly could be full
of many things that fly.’

‘It’s already got chicken, pigeon and quail,
a bit of emu too.
What other birds could we serve
to this doomed, perverted fool?’

And while the diner staff mocked
the poor unknowing Dan,
the duck waited eagerly for his favourite:
twice-cooked chicken flan.

As he waited he let his mind wander
from what his meal could be;
‘Why how nice that vest is being,
oh how very nice to me’