Habitat (Have to Have a Habitat)
Chorus
Habitat, Habitat, Have to Have a Habitat
Habitat, Habitat, Have to Have a Habitat
Habitat, Habitat, Have to Have a Habitat
You have to have a Habitat to carry on!
The ocean is a habitat, a very special habitat
It’s where the deepest water’s at
It’s where the biggest mammal’s at
It’s where out future food is at
It keeps the atmosphere intact
The ocean is a habitat we depend on! (Chorus)
The forest is a habitat, a very special habitat
It’s where the tallest trees are at
It’s where a bear can scratch her back
(ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch)
It keeps the ground from rolling back
Renews the oxygen, in fact
The forest is a habitat we depend on! (Chorus)
The river is a habitat, a very special habitat
It’s where the freshest water’s at
For people, fish, and muskrat
But when people dump their trash
Rivers take the biggest rap
The river is a habitat we depend on! (Chorus)
People are different than foxes and rabbits
Effect the whole world with their bad habits
Better to love it while we still have it
Or rat ta-tat-tat, our habitat’s gone! (Chorus)
Turtle Island
Indians believed a long time ago
That the world was floating through space
On the back of a turtle, that kept it from sinking
Kept it in a safer place
Turtles were special, and thought to be wise
From the ages that live in their eyes
From the back of their shell,
They would keep us so well
In fact, they would keep us alive
Refrain:
We are the children of Turtle Island
A story that’s old and that’s new
On Turtle Island, there’s a turtle smiling
Carrying the world from you
Turtles can migrate from ocean to ocean
Travel thousands of miles in the sea
Crawl from their shells, and seven years later
Come back to the very same beach
Nobody knows how they remember their way
It’s a scientific mystery
Charles Darwin and others became turtle lovers
Because turtles, they felt, held the key
Refrain
Turtles have out-lived the dinosaur kings
With Millenniums stored in their genes
But like so many species on the brink of extinction
We’re losing the turtles of the sea
And now the tables are turning,
The story’s returning
As mythology mixes with fact
As the fate of the turtle, the fate of the Island
Is now resting on our back
Refrain
Like so many creatures on Turtle Island
The world is depending on you
Recycle City
Recycle newspaper, there’s a truck comin’ past
Here in Recycle City we will arrive
Every week at your curbside
Refrain:
It’s easy as takin’ out the trash
You’re making your resources last
It’s easy as taking out the trash (so easy!)
Recycle at home, recycle at school
Recycle the reest that can’t be reused
Here in Recycle City, we’ve got the drive
To keep our rivers and forests alive
Bring Your Own Bag (B.Y.O.B.)
Waiting at the checkout line at the market
Waiting to check my groceries
Checkout clerk says “Paper of Plastic?”
I say “No thanks, B.Y.O.B.!”
Chorus:
Bring Your Own Bag, down to the market
Bring Your Own Bag, for your groceries
Bring Your Own Bag, no paper, no plastic
Bring Your Own Bag, save your own trees
Bring Your Own Bag, B.Y.O.B.
Not long ago this paper was standing
Living the life of an old-growth tree
It came down in the flick of a chainsaw
Became bags at the bag fact’ry (Chorus)
This plastic bag is fresh from a fossil
Floundering in a tanker at sea
Destined now to leach in a landfill
It will out-live you and me
Repeat chorus, changing “trees” to “seas”
Clerk, (spoken):
“Thank you. will that be paper or plastic?”
Shopper, (spoken):
“No thank you, I brought my own bag!”
Repeat first verse and chorus with extra lines:
Save energy
Save your own seas
Don’t Release That Balloon
Read it in a magazine, see it on TV
Here it from Sierra Club, hear it some from me
Plastic is a no-no in the ocean and the sea
Plastic is a no-no when it’s falling from the trees
Refrain:
Please, please, Don’t Release That Balloon
Tie it to your desk, decorate your room
Please, please, Don’t Release That Balloon
Find another way to celebrate the afternoon
When they go a-sailing on a sunny, windy day
They may wind up in the ocean, 500 miles away
They look so nice and harmless as they’re sailing on their way
They may wind up in a dinner that a dolphin ate that day
Fly ‘em in an atrium to the roof so high
Or in the school gymnasium, they’ll come down by and by
Fill ‘em full of helium that makes your voice so high
Fly ‘em where you wanna, but don’t fly ‘em in the sky
Refrain, to Bridge:
Instead of sending up your messages in baloons
Raise your voice and croon, like coyotes at the moon
Please, please, Don’t Release That Balloon
Tie ‘em to your desk, (go clean up your room)
Please, please, Don’t Release That Balloon
Find another way to celebrate the afternoon
There’s so many ways to celebrate the afternoon…POP!
Beach Buddy
A little bit of litter makes a lot of bad beach
It’s bad on the eyesight, it can cut your feet
It wastes our taxes, treats wildlife mean
So be a Beach Buddy, and keep the beaches clean
Plastic trash bags from passing ships
From under the water look like jelly fish
To a hungry sea turtle ‘bout to meet its death
‘Cause they’re easy to bite, but they’re hard to digest
And think of the birds that make the beaches their home
The fish eggs they eat are really Styrofoam
And pop-top bottles and pop-top cans
Turning popular beaches into pop-top lands
It’s good for your feelings, it’s good for your health
Go down to the beach, fill a bag for yourself
Join in the clean-up, then spread the news
Get everybody singing the Beach Buddy Blues
Food Chains
Breakfast meal for a mouse, is the grasn outside his house
All morning it might munch, but a snake eats it for lunch
Before the snake gets thinner, a hawk eats it for dinner
It’s another day in a natural Food Chain
Big fish eat the little fish, a story we know well
Little fish eat crustaceans, swimming in their shells
Crustaceans live on plankton, drifting in the sea
Plankton live on minerals, and this Food Chain is complete
Humu-Humu-Nuku-Nuku-A-Pu-A-‘A
I got off the plane in the Hawaiian rain
Grabbed my goggles and fins to go snorkelling
Jumped into my suit, jumped into the bay
And the very first fish I saw that day (was the:)
Refrain:
Humu humu nuku nuku- a pu-a-’a
Humu humu nuku nuku- a pu-a-’a
Humu humu nuku nuku- a pu-a-’a
The very first fish I saw!
It wasn’t too small, it wasn’t too big
It looked a little bit like a cute little pig
It got pretty close ‘till it got too shy
I think that it winked as it passed me by (the)
Refrain, Instr.
I said to my friends “Come on, take a look!
I just saw the fish we saw last night in the book.”
The once-official fish with the official fish name
‘Till the state fish officials played their fishy name game
Refrain
Now the Humuhumu story is a Hawaiian lulu
I think somebody made a little Hawaiian boo-boo
As you drift off to sleep in pjs and your moo-moos
As you dance in your dreams do a hula with Humu…
Queen Invicta
She stepped off of the boat in Mobile, Alabama
Sometime back in the thirties from her home in deep Brazil
She had six legs and a stinger, fire in her eyes
And the ability to recreate herself a billion times
She didn’t plan to come here, to become chaotic
Imported and exotic, she came against her will
She stalked the Southern states, from Florida to Texas
Gained a reputation as the Queen Ant of the Hill
Refrain
And they call her Queen Invicta (Ouch!)
Fire Ant Invincible (Ouch!)
Nothing here could stop her (Ouch!)
Predator or chemical
The horror stories then grew, like nutria and kudzu
Nobody knew what to do, to stop the fiery tide
And they sprayed the land with chlordane
They sprayed the land with Heptachlor
They sprayed the land with Mirex, but the ant refused to die
Puzzled entomologists, chemists and biologists
Bureaucrat apologists still wondered what to do
For climbing up the food chain, came Heptachlor and chlordane
The fire ants would remain, the chemicals would, too
Refrain
Pesticides persistent, created ants resistant
Eliminated natural foes, going about their business
The cure employed to hit them became worse than the symptom
The efforts to eradicate threatened the whole system
So they banned the searing spray, and they banned the deadly dust
Before they bring the Silent Spring springing up on us
This much we can say, the ant is here to stay
The final bill of over-kill is much to high to pay
Refrain
You who live in cities, you who live in neighborhoods
Fire ants, it’s understood, may come and take their stand
The males that die in nuptials, the queens that come in multiples,
The fire ant, combustible, is hard to understand
In backyards it’s no picnic, but think before you panic
This isn’t the Titanic: don’t give up the land
The poison preparations, blind exterminations
Research the implications, analyze your goal
Reactions based on bedlam may only serve to spread them
To some extent accept them, search for safe control
They call her Queen Invicta (Ouch!)
Fire Ant Invincible (Ouch!)
In our quest to stop her (Ouch!)
Let us first be sensible (Ouch!) (Ouch!) (Ouch!)
Welcome Back, Black-Capped Vireo
Welcome Back, Black-Capped Vireo
Coming back from Mexico
Coming in to land and rest
Make their Central Texas nest
Welcome back Warbler with the Golden Cheek
To the brush of Barton Creek
To the wild of Wild Basin
To their Edward Plateau home again
The Warbler and the Vireo
Since the last Ice Age ago
Have made this land their summer home
And everyone knows:
“There’s no place like home”
They come in on the wings of Spring
Like they have since the Pleistocene
Their wings are short and their journey’s long
They bring us beauty and they bring us song.