here once was a bat who lived in a hat in a crevice overlooking the sea. How’d the hat get there? Why should you care? I should care, it belonged to me. I think the bat stole it, down the street he rolled it, while I was asleep in my bed. And when I awoke, my ears fumed with smoke, for I had nothing to cover my head.

And I rightly have proof, from the marks on my roof, from where the bat climbed down my chimney. Though I’m sure, quite emotive, he’d claim that his motive was eating a cricket named Jimney. Believe him? I wouldn’t. Forgive him? I couldn’t. Not for an excuse so old. My sympathies he’s nursing! That bat that I’m cursing, whenever I find my ears cold.

I’m sure that he’s cozy, and his cheeks they are rosy, up there in my hat in that cliff. And no rocks that I’m throwing or the cold wind that’s blowing will raise him to grant me a tiff. Does he want me to go, leave him be? I don’t know! Though he seems quite adept at ignoring. There are times when I’d swear that he just wasn’t there, were it not for the sounds of him snoring.

I know what you’d plead: leave him be, he’s in need! A new hat you can surely find. But what eats at parts of me is the bat’s larceny: if he’d asked me first I wouldn’t mind. The hat fit too loose and it really was no use, not without the matching green slippers. But that’s just the part that yanks at my heart: a seal stole them for his flippers.