PAD Day 30: Closing Time, or Napoleon Attacked by Rabbits

Today's dual prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo: (1) write a "closing time" poem, and (2) write a poem based on, or engaging with some weird fact or bit of trivia.

I didn't combine the prompts today. I wrote my valedictory poem for Poetic Asides early in the day, a sort of haiku:

At the Poet's Bar

last call

time to finish up

your final draft

For NaPoWriMo, I looked up a link they provided of weird history facts, and I couldn't get one of them out of my mind for the amusing and surreal images it conjured: an actual incident where the emperor Napoleon was attacked by a horde of rabbits. I got a little more background on it and wrote this rhyming couplet light verse:

Napoleon Attacked by Rabbits

There are still some, I think, who revere Bonaparte,

a man whom they think transformed conquest to art.

And yet, unstoppable as he might have been,

there was at least one battle that he couldn't win.

In 1807 a treaty was signed

which put some troubles with Russia behind.

To celebrate, the emperor proposed a stunt,

a huge après-déjeuner wild rabbit hunt.

His aide Berthier organized the event

and with dozens of cages dutifully went

to gather up bunnies to release right on cue,

so hunters could look forward to some rabbit stew.

But after lunch, when set free, instead of retreating,

the long-eared critters were hell-bent on meeting

Napoleon on their own field of battle,

and their onslaught was more than enough to rattle

the grand homme as they hopped right up his pants

and nipped at his heels, which caused him to dance

and shoo them away, a mad hordes of hares,

hundreds, nay, thousands, not as deadly as bears,

but still quite disarming, which caused him to flee

to his carriage, defeated, and still the sortie

would continue -  some even jumped at his wheels

and forced the great emperor to turn on his heels.

They say that Mssr. Berthier's fatal error

which caused Bonaparte and his guests so much terror,

was rounding up not a flock of hares from the wild,

but domestic farm bunnies, who are normally mild,

unless starved in their cages, then released in a bunch -

they saw Bonaparte as the man with their lunch!

I imagine that scene that embarrassed the crown

was not so much Waterloo, as Watership Down.

So that's it for April! Thanks once again for Robert Lee Brewer of Poetic Asides and Maureen Thorson of NaPoWriMo for providing thirty days of inspiration once again. I'll wrap it up tomorrow or so with a summary of my month of writing.