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One night I was scheduled to perform at a BYU Concerts Impromptu but didn't really feel up for it, so I decided I needed a gag for a little energy. I was going to perform a song that had a line about a girl being "chicken to try," so I announced that I had brought along a chick as a backup singer and pulled out of a brown paper bag an ugly adolescent chicken I had borrowed fro the Psych lab. I put it on the boom stand, and while I sang the song the chicken ran up the boom stand, back down, back up again, and then stood on the ball of the microphone making quirky chicken head moves in my face. Heading into the last verse the chicken jumped off the mike onto my shoulder and with its rear end facing the audience proceeded to spread its butt feathers and deposit some droppings down the front of my sweater.
So, it's the end of the school year, my BYU ward is having a closing social, and they want me to do the chicken act again. But (a) I doubted I could repeat it, and (b) a chicken isn't all that funny when you know in advance there's going to be a chicken. So I brought instead another denizen of the Psych lab--a white rat--which necessitated my writing a song that had something to do with rats and saying goodbye at a closing social. As I was introducing the rat, it grabbed hold of the sound hole of my guitar and climbed in, so this song was first performed with a rat inside my guitar.
lyrics
I guess that you have noticed
How all white rats look the same;
If you've got more than a dozen,
It's hard to know their names.
The nice thing 'bout a rat
Is you can take him where you go,
Slip him in your pocket
If it doesn't have a hole.
Ah, rats--is it time to part again?
Sure'd be nice
To find myself a permanent friend.
Maybe you have noticed
People start to look the same,
I guess I've known a million--
I wont' mention any names.
Bad thing 'bout a person,
And I guess by now you know,
If it ain't you that is leavin'
Then ti's them that's gotta go.
On the average I'm in love
'Bout twice a year or so,
And on the average, twice a year,
I'm not in love no more.
If I'm not mistaken,
A rat lives seven years,
Making fourteen times less often
That my best friend disappears.
Maybe I'll go buy a rat,
I can get one pretty cheap,
Have him with me all day long,
Have him with me when I sleep.
But that's not much solution,
I'd rather keep a human,
Have her with me all day long,
Have her with me when I read my scriptures.*
*The original lyric. We changed it in the studio for fear it might offend. Wish we hadn't.
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