Harold the Platypus, made from spares
digs blissfully at unawares;
his beaver's tail, and beak of duck
look strange, but seem to bring him luck.
For old as all the hills is he -
older than such as you or me -
who swam around Gondwanaland
in river beds of mud and sand.

Harold has lost his family;
duck-billed, but kind of mammally;
walks like a serpent, rows with his feet -
milk without breasts, and half incomplete -
fur on his body, webs on his toes,
he will cause laughter wherever he goes.
But watch for the spur from his hindmost leg hung -
you might think it's funny, until you get stung!

Yet stranger than all of our modes of perception -
our Harold relies on electro-reception!
He digs with his beak, and finds shrimps in the mud -
crayfish, worms, insects, all lost in the flood -
a varying voltage just gives him a tweak,
and he picks them all up in a pouch in his cheek.
Then he swims to the burrow he dug in the sand,
to eat all alone what he found with his gland.