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Lyrics for the songs on That Squirrel Song

The Battle of the Squirrel and the CEO

Captain of industry,

Corporate leader,

Retired to the country,

Set up a bird feeder.

Finch-colored plumage,

And not before eight,

The chorus of birdsong

Not boardroom debate.

But the squirrels eat the birdseed

Frighten finches away.

The squirrels they get fat.

They pig-out all day.

Chased away from the feeder

They're back when your gone.

Scourge of retirees

The fiends of the lawn.

When you fight the squirrels,

You get no holidays,

No vacation, no weekend.

The squirrels elude your grand designs.

Each day they eat again.

When you fight the squirrels,

Don't let your guard down,

Keep your wits sharp till the end.

There's nothing else that matters,

You've got that birdseed

To defend.

He put the birdfeeder

Up on a pole.

But that didn't deter

The squirrel from his goal.

A coating of Crisco

Didn't get in his way.

The squirrel climbed right up

To a birdseed buffet.

A flange on the pole

Just slowed him down.

The squirrel shook the pole,

Knocked seed to the ground.

The angry retiree

Will try anything.

To avoid defeat

By this takeover king.

Chorus

The feeder was hung

By a rope from a tree.

But squirrels can climb ropes

When the birdseed is free.

A sheet metal barrier

Didn't stop him for long.

He gnawed through the rope

And he ate all day long.

So if you have wondered

Why the world's such a mess,

Look what men do

When they're doing their best.

Outsmarted by rodents,

Too proud to give in,

They use up their retirement

In a fight they can't win.

If I Had to Count © Bob Gramann 1996

Hey, did you ever notice how

Morning shadows coat a dusty town

How morning breeze delays the swarm

Of attacking bugs when it gets warm.

How the hammer feels gripped in your hand

Brings a pleasure to the working day

So though my body may be tired,

I know exactly what I've done.

If I had to count my life in minutes

This is surely what I'd do.

I'd keep on doing what I'm doing

Though my moments might be few.

Make stories 'bout the things I see,

Take notes and truths about history.

Try to bend them into song

The way it feels to me.

Tropical trees make up this box

I love the feel of real wood

Singing notes from steel strings

Oh it sounds so good to me.

It's lifelong work to get it right

But I practice hard every night

Even though my fingers may be tired,

It certainly feels like fun to me.

It might be it's a dirty job

But I already knew it

Someone has to hold you tight

I'm just the one to do it.

It's lifelong work to get it right

But I practice hard every night

Even though my body may be tired,

This job just must be done.

It doesn't snow very often

In central Virginia.

It's just too far south.

We're more used to rain.

But there's something 'bout the snow

Brings out that playfulness in you.

An ambush of snowballs

And I'm chasing you again.

A few million snowflakes

A few million kisses

A million here,

A million there,

Pretty soon you're talking 'bout real love.

First impressions last a lifetime

Bringing family ties and bills

And dirty floors and leaking roofs

Not even time for bitchin'

Bedtime stories, soccer, car repairs,

No time to ourselves

Don't forget to say hello

Passing in the kitchen.

A few million greetings

A few million kisses

A million here,

A million there,

Pretty soon you're talking 'bout real love.

40 million minutes build a lifetime.

A million bricks construct a mall.

A million kisses build a lifelong love.

It's built from things so small.

Little things make the difference

Like touching while we're talking.

Like talking eye-to-eye

Like loving what you say.

Bringing onions from the grocery

Like kissing as we're waking,

No need to remember

You tell me every day.

A few million words

A few million kisses

A million here,

A million there,

Pretty soon you're talking 'bout real love.

Victoria is a splendid city on Vancouver Isle

Casey set out in Old Rattle to shop there for a while.

Can't drive there from the mainland, but the ferry isn't bad.

The sun was breaking through the clouds and she began to smile.

She turned and parked Old Rattle beside the Quickie Mart.

She browsed among the papers and a picture caught her heart.

She bought that Vancouver Sun and a Cadbury's for the ferry run

Casey drove into the ferry. On the auto deck, she parked.

The sun shone warmly on the deck as she scouted out a chair.

The news paper would have to wait. She fell asleep right there.

Of seagulls, foam, and sails she dreamed, as sunlight on the water gleamed

Nothing better than a nap on deck, out in the salty air.

A tearing noise beside her and suddenly she stirred

A wrapper from a candy bar, that was the noise she heard.

A wrapper blew across the deck, a man was chewing on her chocolate.

Her mouth it hung wide open, she couldn't say a word.

While swallowing her candy, he opened up the Sun.

He chuckled at a story, turned the pages one-by-one.

He tucked it under his green coat, her angry words stuck in her throat

The stranger walked away. She couldn't believe what he had done.

What Casey felt was anger, clawing at her from inside.

What Casey felt would trouble her all through the ferry ride.

What Casey felt was hunger gnawing, the hole the chocolate left was growing.

Why did she let him take it? What happened to her pride?

A sandwich, a sandwich. That would have to do.

Casey went down to the snack bar to get herself some food.

There sat a man in a coat of green, munching on a submarine.

Don't get mad, get even. A plan began to brew.

She spied the other exit onto the starboard deck.

She crept slowly up behind him so he never would suspect.

She gripped the sandwich and his hands, snatched a bite, away she ran.

"If he ever looks at me again, he'll treat me with respect!"

Oh, the joy of vengeance; revenge without a doubt.

Casey ran across the auto deck, so happy she could shout.

There, on the seat inside her car, a paper and a chocolate bar.

There's no joy in Vancouver, mighty Casey has struck out.

Source of falling water

Life and refuge from the plains

Each mountain hollow filled with plants

Unique and unexplained.

No reason to climb up there

'Cept I want to be above

And feel my muscles push me up

This mountain that I love.

Vibram scuffing over granite

Bears flee to other trails

It's not because the air is thin

That I stop to inhale.

Ever steeper up the switchbacks

'Till the path pokes through the trees

Through crevices and past the cliffs

Up into the breeze.

Ants scrambling over gravel

Weekend tourists climb Old Rag

To view what seems like all the state,

To jump from crag to crag.

I'd really like to meet the man

Who figured out the paths

That snake through gaps between the rocks

Where the hiker scrapes his arms.

There's many things a father

Wants to pass on to his son.

But, some things he finds out on his own

And shares with everyone.

Even when its boulder top

Penetrates the clouds

I still imagine the whole world below

As I look around.

White was once the color

Of this old wood grey garage

Back behind the farmhouse

Next to the leaning barn.

Decade since the last corn

Neighbor cuts hay once a year.

No more working fields at dawn.

Only wildlife living here.

The smells of clay and gasoline,

Old canvas, rope, and straw

Greet the nostrils of the curious

Who explore the old garage.

Throw back the dusty canvas

Worn out '47 Ford.

Must have been to Richmond

A hundred times or more.

Hey, look up in the rafters:

A cedar-ribbed canoe

With peeling skin and rotted seats

And a hole that goes right through.

The day he caught that catfish,

Camping on the south sandbar,

A childhood eighty years ago,

In the boat above the car.

I still love to drive here

To see the stars at night

Though the city's glow

Is brighter every year.

Hear the barn creak in the summer breeze

Watch the sky for satellites.

Imagine that old farmer standing near.

And the weather, bugs, and fungus

Make the barn lean more each year.

The earth pulls on all things

That stand above.

Neglect surrenders to the wind.

No reason left to stand

Next generation's memories

Will be town and not the land.

If you screamed with delight when I came too near.

I'd know you loved me, I'd call you my dear.

If your voice chimed in tune when I sang a song,

Wherever you'd go, I'd come along.

If your lips formed a smile when our eyes chanced to meet,

If you told me neat jokes, if you played with my feet,

If you tickled my torso and lickled my ear,

I'd chortle and snort 'till I pulled myself clear.

Sally, I love you, you've got to know:

I'm gonna follow, wherever you go.

If I stole up behind you and circled your waist,

Would you shake loose and flee or return the embrace?

If I made up a song about your dainty knees,

Would you stutter and blush or just be displeased?

If I brought you some licorice, if I brought you some cheese,

If I made you a neck a lace of clovers and bees,

If I tickled your torso and lickled your ear,

Would you love me forever or just 'till next year?

If I knew not the answer, well, I wouldn't ask.

If it weren't for true love, you'd be feeling harassed.

Tickles and lickles, chortles and chase,

I'd run till I caught you no matter the place.

Sally, I love you, you've got to know:

I'm gonna chase you, wherever you go.

If I were a cabbage moth, if you were my light.

I'd find myself drawn to you, night after night.

If you were a ladybug and I were the wind

I'd lift you to me and catch you again.

It's not hypothetical, we can't be apart.

Your lipids and quippeds belong in my heart.

If I tickled your torso and lickled your nose

Would you grant your acceptance to all I propose?

If I knew not the answer, well, I wouldn't ask.

If you didn't love me, my heartplane would crash.

Tickles and lickles, love you till I die,

No closer friend can you find than I.

Sally, I love you, I've got to know:

We'll walk together, wherever we go.

There's no finer ending than coming back home

Be it owned, or rented, or purchased on loan.

If you screamed with delight when I came too near

I'd tickle your torso and lickle your ear.

Sally, I love you, We've got to know:

We'll walk together, wherever we go.

It might be oral tradition.

It might be in the genes.

They didn't learn it from their parents.

Did they hear it in their dreams?

March of civilization

Hasn't changed the playtime screams.

Voices from the children

Still reflect the same old themes:

It's mine.

Give it back

I'm gonna tell.

I don't care.

You're it

No tag backs.

Me first.

It's not fair.

If it hadn't been said before,

They'd have to make it up.

When you're only four years old,

Your feelings just erupt.

If you can't remember

What it's like to be so small

Walk by any playground

Listen to the calls.

They say the world is changing.

Not like when we were young.

Folks are mean, the ozone's lean,

Even children carry guns.

But if you listen to the little kids

You might suspect that they're the same.

Try remembering what it felt like

To play in children's games.

Kickball, football, slides and swings.

Race and fight, roll on the ground.

Jumping rope, they dance and sing

Might be loud, that's how fun sounds.

Childhood is for learning

About other times than today,

About life and love and planning

And why all things can't be play.

About the little deals and big deals,

And how to wait your turn,

And when it's best to walk away

And when you should return.

Hard rain awoke me in the night.

That only means one thing to me.

A bunch of guys with plastic boats

Will be skipping work today.

Grandma has to die again

We all meet at the edge of town,

Driving for the eastern slopes

To ride the water down.

I love to ride the back

Of a rushing mountain stream,

To thread between the eddies

Amidst the banks of April green.

The icy water warms my blood,

Waves splash over me,

In the river I am young, I am free.

To rise before the mist has cleared,

To chase the rainfall down the hillside.

Climb the goat trail road

To the bank where I unload.

I dress to seal my city skin

From the icy mountain water in

Which I'll float without my boat

If I miss a brace.

As I paddle down the mountain stream

The unsuspecting beaver

slaps his tail and swims to flee

the brightly colored threat.

The drinking deer sniffs the air

and bounds into the thicket

While Blue Heron wing in front of me

Then fly back overhead.

To rise before the mist has cleared,

To chase the rainfall down the hillside.

Solitude, run away

Where time slows down

Quiet pierced by osprey cries

Turtles splash, swim to hide

Ripples spread river wide.

Canoe splits Rappahannock water.

Dip my paddle, let it glide

Roads and fords, mills and mines

Used to line this stream.

All reclaimed by floods and vines

Foundations sprouting gums and pines

River flows on, so does time.

Canoe splits Rappahannock water.

Dip my paddle, let it glide

Speeding down a country road

Poles fly past.

Like the days, they blur together

Slow it down, don't let it go so fast.

Children, jobs, and cars and planes

Shrink distances and time.

Engines push us to our eighties,

We become old men and ladies

But I hide where the time escapes me.

Canoe splits Rappahannock water.

Dip my paddle, let it glide

Rain or sleet, or wind or heat,

It's all the same to me.

Weather you can never choose.

Each day that's mine, that day I'll use

To flee from time in my canoe.

Its bow splits Rappahannock water.

Dip my paddle, let it glide

The corn was only three feet high

Imagination couldn't see

That love would be much taller

With each harvest going by.

Little town in Iowa

Norman Rockwell come to life.

Home to this family man

His children and his wife.

Father, lover, businessman.

He coached the softball team.

Leader in this midwest town

Taught basketball to teens.

Expert cookie baker,

Only fault was that he snored

Almost forgot to mention:

He was a hero in the war.

Between the lines

You've got to read between the lines

Their names aren't written on the wall

The people who were killed by war

After they came home

Their names won't be written on the wall.

Patriotic volunteers,

Reluctant conscriptees,

It doesn't matter too much

How they landed overseas.

Where a jet could take a man home

From the fighting overnight

But terrors, tumors, traumas

Might join him for the flight.

Take responsibility

That's what defines a man.

And so it was with John.

Five hundred airmen plucked from harm

The list goes on and on.

Five hundred men escaped the wall

Funny thing is, so did John.

The TV scenes don't come from

Southeast Asia anymore.

It's taught as high school history

A far off time before.

Pause in the conversation

Where my brother would have been.

Knowing what we know now

I'm sure he'd do it all again.

Every generation cries

"Don't let these lessons be forgot."

The widows and the children cry

"Don't let it be for naught."

The nation owes a tribute

To all who gave their lives

Let these tributes be a warning

To all who still survive.

Between the lines

You've got to read between the lines

Their names aren't written on the wall

The people who were killed by war

After they came home

Their names won't be written on the wall.

Between the lines

You've got to read between the lines

Their names aren't written on the wall

Let these tributes be a warning

To all who still survive.

So their names won't be written on a wall.

Mike took a flight Northeast out of Houston.

To write computer games out on the coast.

Trading humidity

For frost and salary

But leaving behind all he loves the most.

He told Sally Ann that everyday he'd write her.

From mfiller@gamewriternet.com.

He'll be the who writes the code

That makes the beast explode

While dreaming of the bayous and her arms.

Do the 'dillo shells still line

The roads of Texas?

Does the Houston channel water still run brown?

Every day I'm tied to

This wire that connects us

You're the only happiness I've found.

Information isn't knowledge

Don't let it suck you in.

Wisdom takes years to comprehend.

This living on the wire

Leaves a lot to be desired

I wish that I could see you once again.

All day his fingers clatter 'cross the keyboard.

To animate imaginary men.

To make what you think you see

Look like reality

But all the while he dreams of Sally Ann.

E-mail flies between them on their keyboards.

Only seconds but two thousand miles apart.

Loving messages he writes

Sally Ann he invites

To visit him and soothe his aching heart.

But those hours at the screen soon made him dizzy.

The diagnosis was a terminal disease.

Six more weeks till she's alone

He couldn't tell her on the phone.

Then he figured how

To keep from being deceased.

He'd write himself a smart computer program.

It would read and answer Sally Ann's e-mail.

Just six weeks to go

To teach it all he knows.

She'd never learn how his health had failed.

He wrote her that it'd take a little longer

He'd be back in just a few more weeks.

As he was growing frail

He built his fake e-mail

Program that forever for him speaks.

He taught it all the things he loved in Houston.

He programmed all he knew of Sally Ann.

He programmed in some sleaze

And his idiosyncracies.

So she couldn't tell apart machine and man.

The day he died, the e-mail program wrote her.

It typed, "It's snowing, but I'm feeling fine.

I miss your loving eyes,

I miss those cajun fries.

And it's hard to taste your kisses here on-line."

For several months they carried on the romance

With Sally Ann no wiser to the fraud.

Then she wrote that she had grown

But he hadn't on his own.

And she felt their relationship was flawed.

There's a lonely e-mail program in the Northeast.

Searching for another girl on-line.

Searching coast to coast

It's Mike Filler's ghost

But in the fibers of the internet confined.

So don't go spending all your time

Out on the network.

Don't believe in them electronic words

They'll only bring you strife.

It's time you got a life.

There's no difference 'tween a net ghost and a nerd.

Tried to read the paper

But I can't concentrate.

Ran down to the station

But I got there too late.

Running 'round the city

Looking for you

Wondering if you'll see me

Wondering if you knew.

I'm out of my mind

Yearning for you

Wrecking my routines

I got irregular blues.

I'm out of my mind

I dream of your kiss

Chasing you all over

You don't know I exist.

I follow every day

Watch you out of your door.

Chase you to the laundry

Stalk you to the store.

Don't eat those greasy onion rings

They're no good for you.

Wonder if you've seen me

Wonder if you knew:

Chorus

Instrumental embellishment

Chorus

Some day I'm going to meet you

I'll say hello

I know you'll love me

That's my goal.

Some day I'll stand in front of you

'Stead of chasing from behind.

Hoping you won't say:

"Boy, you're out of your mind!"

Chorus

When I was still a little boy

An explosion down below,

Woke me in the middle of the night,

With a smell I didn't know.

I ran down to the basement.

Broken glass was everywhere.

That's when I learned

About homebrew beer.

My Dad brewed up five gallons

With mail-order stuff.

He stored it in glass bottles,

Screwed the tops on good enough.

Put in a bit more sugar

Just to carbonate it more,

And the pressure blew those bottles

Cross the floor.

Oh, I love to drink

That homemade beer.

In the basement,

I can make it through the year.

Hops and yeast and barley malt

Make the drink that we revere

Oh, I love to drink

That homemade beer.

Start collecting long neck bottles

If you want to make some brew.

Get yourself some John Bull malt,

Some hops and ale yeast, too.

Simmer hops and malt together,

Cool it, pour it in the vat,

And let that beer wort ferment

Nearly flat.

Siphon into bottles,

The dregs rise if you pour.

Carefully stamp on the caps.

Find a cool dark place to store.

Don't be too impatient

Can't drink it till its time

Age that beer three weeks

It's in its prime.

chorus

Instrumental break

Handed down through generations:

My Grand Dad made it, too.

Even ancient Sumerians

Mixed up a little brew.

And when my boy gets old enough

I'm gonna teach him, too.

Gonna keep up the tradition:

Homemade beer.

Chorus

Thursday morning rainfall

East side of the mountains

Drops form into rivulets

And gullies into streams.

Sun was high on Monday

When swirling Thursday's water

Rode the river past the town

But the river's still with me.

River stays beside me

Though the water's always changing.

Waters blend, Best of friends.

Best friends last all life.

Want to finish 'fore the night falls.

Start early in the morning.

I'll carry up the shingles

You hammer, then we'll trade.

Side by side, we work along

Words that matter weave among

Our patter through the heat and sun,

My best friend's here with me.

We've stood so long together

Though we both are always changing.

Like waters blend, Best of friends.

Best friends last all life.

Round my body like a favorite chair

Wrinkles, folds, familiar air

Details no one wants to know

Each day I love you even more.

Dusted by the grey sprite

Just another milestone overnight.

Memories from my childhood

Don't seem so long ago.

Yet every day, you're someone new.

Each day, I fall in love with you.

More certain than the sky is blue

You'll be my friend for life.

We've stood so long together

Though we both are always changing.

Best of friends, Next-of-kin.

Best friends last all life.

Thursday morning rainfall

East side of the mountains

Drops form into rivulets

And gullies into streams.

Sun was high on Monday

When swirling Thursday's water

Rode the river past the town

But the river's still with me.

River stays beside me

Though the water's always changing.

Like waters blend, Best of friends.

Best friends last all life.

Best of friends, Next-of-kin.

We'll be best friends for life.