The Cat in the BP Hat
In the 1958 book The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, Dr. Seuss' nettlesome cat leaves a bright pink ring in the tub after taking a bath. The cat's attempts at cleanup only spread it to the wall, the bed and beyond. Thumbing through the book, we saw parallels to BP and the not-so-pink spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
It was our time for play.
It was our time for sun.
It was our time to swim.
There was fun to be done.
All that white, snow white sand,
All that sand was just grand.
Well ... There we were.
We were playing like that.
And then who should stroll up
But the Cat in the BP Hat!
"Bad spill?" laughed BP. "Oh, my, my! No, no no!"
We had heard of the rig in the gulf, and its woe.
"I'll be safe. I'll be clean. I'll be out of your reaches.
I promise no oil will wash up on your beaches."
And then we heard about the leak!
A big hole in the pipe!
And, oh boy!
Did we gripe!
A big long black oil plume!
Gushing all night and all day!
And we said, "Will it ever stop?
No, no way."
"Have no fear of that oil," laughed BP in the Hat.
"Why, I can block the leak.
Just like that!"
Do you know how he did it?
With robotic subs!
But the valve wouldn't close, the first of their flubs!
Still the cat laughed, "Ho! Ho!
I can make the oil go.
The way I stop oil is just so!"
"See here!" laughed the cat.
"It's not hard. Just go home.
The thing that blocks oil leaks the best is a dome!"
When we saw the cat drop a dome, four floors high.
A big ice slushy grew.
The dome floated.
Goodbye!
"Oh, too big!" BP laughed.
"Let me tell you, I know.
To cap that oil leak, that big dome has to go!"
So just what did he do?
He came up with Dome Two!
And we said to the cat:
"This won't clean up the goo!
This dome is just smaller. You just shrank it some."
"We call it the top hat — like I had in Book One!
And of course it will work," laughed the Cat in the Hat.
"That top hat will catch all the oil that is spilling.
And funnel it up to a ship near the drilling.
But that didn't work either!
We thought, what a mess!
So what would be next?
No one could guess.
"I can clean up that spill," said the cat, "by Week Three.
No spill is too big for an oil cat like me!"
He went to the people, tried to give them some hope:
Golf balls, he said, shredded tires, knotted rope.
"Junk shot," he called it.
BLAM! So the hole, we will block!
And all we could say was, "Golf balls, Cat?"
What a crock.
But the cat just stood still.
He just looked at the spill.
"That was not the right kind of a fill," the cat said.
"To stop oil in water will be hard," said the cat.
"I can't do this alone," said BP in his Hat.
He talked to smart folks, a Nobel Prize guy!
Drill a relief well, someone said. At least try!
"That could work," the cat said. Then he gave a low curse.
"Maybe," he said.
"But it could make things worse."
He thought with his thinker and then thought some more
About the gusher that flowed from the Gulf of Mex floor.
"If we can't stop the oil,
We can just break it up!"
So they poured in some stuff to thin out the flow.
But who knew, now, where the oil drops might go?
"You broke up the oil slick," we said.
"That is true.
But now you made tar balls!
You can't let them stay!"
"Let us think about that," said BP. "We will pay."
"Let us help, we can do it!"
Said some wildlife lovers.
Then Pop!
Right behind them came hundreds of others.
"We will clean up that oil if it takes us all day!
If it takes us all month, we will clean it away!"
Said all the sad people gathered that day.
They ran to the shore, then we ran out too.
And BP cat laughed, "Now you will see something new!"
These cats are all clever.
These cats have long hair.
These cats have ideas.
They're stuffing pantyhose down there!
But this did not look very clever at all.
Soak up oil with stockings?
Who made that dumb call?
"They'll just clog up the landfill!"
We yelled at BP.
"Your plans are no good.
Why can't you all see?
Take your robots, your domes, your boat and top hat,
Keep your golf balls and tires, we don't want all of that."
Workers waded in tar balls up to their gills
They put them in pails and they made tar ball hills!
Oily turtles!
Dead dolphins!
Egrets with oil-caked bills!
Oh, the things that they found!
And the black blood kept spewing, staining the ground.
Someday, years from now, That big splotch will be gone
Our memories will fade and time will march on.
And so, when you need sweet crude again
The oil cats will be happy to come back With their friends ...
... With boats and blasts, pipes and plans, They'll gladly start drilling.
Whenever you folks in Florida are willing.
Listen to the Lorax!
Unless someone like you Cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better.
It's not ...
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