The Tartan

Below the high plateau of Tech, beneath the Squirrel’s Hill

There runs amidst the rocky slopes a quiet, burbling rill

And in this part of Schenley Park where stones are slick with mist,

A most peculiar creature is reputed to exist

A man of steel! Or iron, copper, tin — accounts will vary —

Does haunt about this hollow as its home and sanctuary.

Forewarned by ye, and take my tale as one you oughtn’t follow

For this was my encounter with the BEAST OF PANTHER HOLLOW

Well I was on a stroll, stressing, thinking up a key,

That’d let me skirt the consequences of my AIV

The dean said I would not receive my ’ploma with my peers

Because I shared some homework with a pal my freshman year

So I meandered, walking toward the sound of water rushing

And wound up in that aforementioned spooky-sorta junction

I could hear the headlines mock as I got lost and lost-er:

“Stupid kid from CMU gets taken by the monster.”

The shadows teemed with eyes and fangs, poised to pounce and eat ya

Until I met a beeping, whirring, clanking kinda creature

O bright red eyes and soldered brains, motor-driven roller chains,

Rivets, bolts, and bevel-gears galore!

I trembled at its fearsome size, strong as something not alive

Surely I was not long for this Earth!

“Hey!” proclaimed a timid crackle, buzzing from a speaker

“It’s awful lonely in these woods, I’m pleased I get to meet ya

I am no beast, I’m just the product of some strange experiment

I beg you stranger, listen, for nobody else is hearin’ it!”

That steel can speak must be a techno-logic revolution — 

The beast is merely from our own robotics institution!

From whence, I did not see, a shadow leapt behind the bot

And whacked the power out the feller with a single shot

Silent was the savior, standing stoic as a Spartan

I saw naught but his snowy hair beneath a cap of Tartan

I cannot give a sure ID, the memory is shaky

But I do swear it only could have been Andrew Carnegie

“Do not be afraid,” he said, with poise and grandiose.

“You cannot tell what you have seen, or seen you do suppose”

He grasped a solid rod of steel, glinting like a knife.

“I don’t ask twice, young man, you best start running for your life.”

A runner by the name of Sue was passing by this A.M.

And came up the evidence of yester-evening’s mayhem

She went and told the skinny to a writer at the RatNat

“Another student taken by the beast,” end quote.

And that’s that.

So careful where your wanderings lead and where the answers follow,

You may just one day meet the beast that lurks in Panther Hollow.