A poe is a creature
who lives underground,
in a hole of his own design.
It has tunnels and passages,
great big round rooms,
and diamonds, for which the poes mine.

A poe looks like a long, tall mouse,
and mostly brown, but sometimes grey.
It has long claws, and whispery whiskers,
and goes up to the field to play.

It has a furry stubby tail,
and it often wiggles its nose.
It squeeks a shrill and noisy squeek,
to warn the other poes.

Some people collect them.
There's rare cards you can trade a poe for,
but it's quite a common creature.
In fact it looks just like a gopher.

There is an ancient story,
that goes back a couple years,
about a fight between two poes,
that had caused many tears.

It's a story about friendship,
and how the fight was ended,
and now here is the story
of the poe who was befriended.

----

A poe.
A salt-and-pepper poe.
A prim and proper pepper poe.
A proud and princely,
prim and proper,
prick of a salt-and-pepper poe,
was sitting just inside his hole,
seeing dirt, everywhere.

The neighbour poe,
a sloppy joe,
not five metres to the North,
was sitting just outside his hole,
trying to catch some air.

The pepper poe,
in cleaning mode,
was scraping loose dirt from the walls,
and kicking it, with undue force,
away, as far as it would go.

The neighbour poe,
the sloppy poe,
was up, admiring the view,
when all at once,
a clump of dirt,
it flew, right threw the air, onto
the top of the sloppy poe's head.

His eye turned red.
The poe, he said
"Who threw dirt on top of my head?"
He looked around, and looked, and found
there was no one around.

The tidy poe,
meanwhile was so
engrossed in cleaning up his hole,
he didn't even notice that the other poe was there.

He kept on cleaning, scraping and flinging
dirt in all directions for the sake of being clean.
The sloppy poe kept getting hit.
The dirt, it hurt!  And he started getting mean.

The pepper poe, during his chores,
his boring chores he so adored,
the cleaning up and tidying up,
he endlessly enjoyed,
uncovered from the wall
a little stone, hard as bone,
hard as lead, as big and lead
as the pepper poe's head,
and he kicked it away as well.

The neighbour poe,
the sloppy poe,
was looking all around,
when the stone, as big and round
as the little poe's head,
it flew, right threw the air, onto
the poor little sloppy poe's toe.

Ow!  Oh no!  The poor little poe.
His poor little toe, it hurt so much.
He looked around, he looked and found
the hole of the tidy pepper poe.

He saw the hole, ejecting dirt,
and the two little feet kicking it up into the air.
He started throwing back, and the two neighbour poes
had a great big dirt fight right then and there.

The dirt flew like wind,
or like lots of tennis balls,
scraped from the walls of the pepper poe's home.
Back and forth and back again
the dirt, it flew, like dirty rain,
until each poe, and each poe's hole
was dirty as dirt, and tired and drained.

At last, the two poes stepped outside
their dirty homes and glared.
They glared and stared and eyed each other,
and circled round and hissed.
They stepped right through the piles of dirt
that obviously missed.

The pepper poe looked up and down
his neighbour, the sloppy poe,
and all at once, he saw the toe,
the sore and red and puffy toe,
of the neighbour, the sloppy poe,
and realized, oh my, oh no,
the stone, that great big stony stone,
the hard as lead and big as a head
stone he had pulled from the wall,
he threw it right through the air,
right on top of the neighbour poe's toe.

How careless to throw a stone
a stone's throw to the toe 
of the poe to the North.
The pepper poe felt very bad
for throwing dirt back and forth.

He climbed into the neighbour's hole
and very quickly, in his arms,
scooped up all the extra dirt
and placed it, very nice and slow,
just outside the door.

The sloppy poe, he felt bad too,
he did the same for the pepper poe's hole.
And so the two, they made their truce,
their cease-fire, and so the abuse
was ended.
They have since been friends.
And that is the story of the poe who was befriended.