Drag the Magic Puffin - original parody

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In view of the current vogue for books and films featuring vampires, I thought I'd revitalize an old friend from the sixties....

Drag the magic puffin wasn't just a bird;
He also was a vampire, though I know it sounds absurd.
He drank the blood of anything that seemed a trifle weak;
He'd yellow fangs three inches long concealed inside his beak.

A magic puffin's not the sort that you'll see every day;
Its orange beak and golden plumes will scare most folk away.
If you see the vampire type, it's pretty frightful luck;
It sinks its fangs into your neck, goes errrrrgh! and starts to suck.

Drag the magic puffin lived miles from the sea
And frolicked deep in forests dark and lonely cemeteries;
Little Jacky Viper loved that vampire, Drag,
And brought him mice and voles to eat inside a picnic bag.

Together they would travel in a souped-up V8 Hearse
Seven gears and overdrive and three more in reverse.
Jacky did the driving; for miles and miles each night
Till Drag would say "I'm hungry, lad, so let's stop for a bite."

Just in case you're wondering, it simply isn't true
That, asked if he liked children, Drag the Puffin said, "I do,
But I couldn't manage a whole one." His answer to the question
Was actually, "No. You see, they give me indigestion."

How do puffins turn to vampires? In the case of Drag.
He chatted up a cormorant, expecting just a shag.
He didn't know she drank the blood of any foolish bloke
Who thought that for a fish or two she'd let him have a poke.

He offered her a haddock, saying, "Darling, do have this."
"How sweet," she answered with a sigh. "Now you deserve a kiss."
Drag closed his eyes and pursed his beak, expecting just a peck;
The next thing that he knew, she'd plunged her fangs into his neck.

He felt his lifeblood draining as she almost sucked him dry,
And then she laughed and said with relish, "Now you'll never die.
You'll sleep by day, grow fangs and through the night remain awake
Till Buffy comes to find you with a mallet and a stake."

"What's your plan, Drag," Jacky asked, "if Buffy comes for you?"
"She's pretty fit," was Drag's reply, "So this is what I'll do:
I'll lie in wait, then bare my fangs; my muscles I will flex
And study every move she makes through magic x-ray specs!"

One grey night it happened: Jacky Viper came no more,
So Drag went out and found him dead; their friendship was no more.
He took him to a taxidermist but hope for Jack was past
So fondly Drag did have him stuffed and mounted under glass.

His head was bent and twisted, the stuffing all fell out,
Till putrefaction staled the air and drove the neighbours out.
Without his lifelong friend, Drag could not be brave,
So Drag that magic puffin sadly slipped into his grave.

Drag the magic puffin lived miles from the sea
And frolicked deep in forests dark and lonely cemeteries;
Little Jacky Viper loved that vampire, Drag,
And brought him mice and voles to eat inside a picnic bag.

Fratercula cirrhata (Tufted Puffin) is found in open water or on the islands and coastal cliffs of the northern Pacific. Standing up to 40 cm in height and with a wingspan of up to 75cm, it can weigh as much as a kilogram and is bigger than other species of puffin. During the breeding season, its normally grey face becomes white, it develops long and curly golden plumes on the back of its head and neck, and a bright orange-yellow plate forms over the base of its large red-orange beak.

Also featured: Vipera (viper) and Phalacrocorax Aristotelis (cormorant, aka common shag)

Words by Paddy Wex (2009), inspired by Leonard Lipton and Peter Yarrows Puff the Magic Dragon (1963)