My friend, who used to be quite plump
And used to have a dowager’s hump,
Who wouldn’t run and couldn’t jump,
Has gotten very thin.
She gets up early every morn
And runs ten miles before the dawn.
Her fatty bits have turned to brawn.
She’s lost her double chin.

And when I quizzed her, on the quiet,
She said she’s on the paleo diet
And then suggested I should try it.
I can’t imagine why.
She eats what cavemen ate for food,
The stuff they gnawed, and chomped, and chewed
With cat-tail roots and berries stewed,
Down in the Olduvai.
Or eggs they’d found, a royal treat,
And lots of lovely mammoth meat,
But nothing white, and nothing sweet,
No ice-cream, cake, or pie.

And now she fishes, traps, and hunts.
Mostly she speaks in squeaks and grunts.
She’s weaving cedar clothes, and once
I found her knapping flint.
She seems at peace, though hard to reach
In her small cave on Whalebone beach,
And though I’m loathe to warn or preach,
I have to give this hint:

No aurochs roam our valleys now.
In place of them, the placid cow,
The grassy steppes are under plough,
The new modus vivendi.
Those mammoths they are dead and gone
Beneath the ground they trampled on.
Be careful what you munch upon,
Especially if it’s trendy.