Before the Camping Trip

Few believe and none now know
If the old town tale was true.
'Bout three hundred years ago,
They first told what I tell you.

The first who came to those hills
Brought ax and saw as their tools.
Their job was to feed the mills
With logs drug to streams by mules.

So they say, that one morning,
They heard unhappy braying.
A mule a tree adorning,
Atop in the wind swaying.

"Who taught you to climb a tree,
You dang-cussed, long-eared fool?
Now it's down for which you plea -
We should leave you, as a rule."

All day 'twas to fetch him down -
It took the whole cursing crew.
Their anger in sleep to drown -
But next morning, there were two.

One was twenty feet up there,
The other 'bout twenty-five.
'Twas like they'd flown through the air
By ways none could quite contrive.

"This didn't happen on that hill
Nor none we cut before now.
Of this place, I've had my fill
And I'll not come back, I vow."

And so they left it uncleared
To harvest all around it.
They say Mule Hill's ghostly weird,
Protected by a spirit.

So you have your camping fun,
And hike that hill, if you please.
But beware when sets the sun
Of mules falling from the trees.