Ludicrous Lore

They say the perpetrators all got off scot-free
by posing as indigenous, but how could that be?

They made a ludicrous trio, emerging from their car.
All wrapped-up like packages, they couldn’t wander far.

They’d been here stealing chickens from White Cloud’s poultry farm
 on the reservation, but what could be the harm?

He had so many chickens that he’d never miss the one
or two or three or four or five that they had pinched for fun.

Yet with feathers in their hat bands and blankets held around them,
instead they uttered this excuse when the rangers found them.

They’d done a bit of hunting here on tribal land.
Their leader was Geronimo. He and his loyal band

had shot the deer with arrows, then bound it to their roof
with ropes tied ’round its antlers and then around one hoof.

But driving down the winding road, the driver got too dizzy.
(They said that it was vertigo that put him in a tizzy.)

That’s what caused the accident that spilled them off the road
where they toppled over sideways and lost their struggling load.

The deer ran off into the woods. It seems it wasn’t dead,
but merely stunned when arrows hit it on the head.

(Luckily, the bottle from which they’d all been drinking
had fallen in the water where the car was quickly sinking.)

It’s surprising that the rangers believed their tawdry tale,
and so they didn’t haul these buffoons off to jail.

They simply called a tow truck, which to their consternation
towed the whole bunch down the road to the reservation

where, alas, they found no kin but only laughter met them
as they huddled near the car and phoned for friends to get them.

And after they departed—hungover, sodden, sore,
their whole silly debacle passed into tribal lore.

The time those drunken cowboys with nothing else to do
sneaked onto the tribal lands and tried to pass for Sioux.

Their totaled car they left behind, and here the whole plot thickens.
It now serves as a handy coop for all the tribal chickens.

Today”s prompt words are scot-free, vertigo, indigenous and package. Image by Tyler Mulligan on Unsplash.