***Welcome to Beastly Tales. Each has a message, a moral. All are meant to have an element of humour. Naturally, any names included do not depict real folk but are included as part of the joke.***

***All rights reserved.
(As with Beastly Banter Beastly Tales is written and illustrated by Richard Hersel.)***

***Thank you for your following.
Richard Hersel***


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<h1>BEASTLY TALES</h1>

<h1>THE NORTHERN LIGHTS</h1>

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***Hamish Hogstead was built rather large,
Too corpulent, you might think, for espionage.
But Hamish was having none of that,
He was most successful, under his espionage hat.
It was he who had uncovered the plans,
Of a Soviet missile, prohibited under treaty bans,
Political one-upmanship swiftly followed,
Resulting in an agreement precariously hollowed,
Hollowed so as to have no substance at all,
Of this, among Hamish’s achievements, he had no recall.***


***“I do remember when I discovered a plot,”
“To sink the Governor’s luxury yacht!”
“They were going to plant a bomb,”
“Stuck to the yacht’s hull, with some a-plomb!”
“But a team of frog-men foiled that plot,”
“The Governor sailing off, unaware, in his yacht.”
“He could have sent me a “thank-you” note,”
“Had he actually blown up, I wouldn’t gloat!”
“But, that’s now how it works in the spymasters world.”
“Duty done, but no “thank-you” unfurled!”***


***The world was teetering on the brink of war,
Nuclear tension, the highest ever they saw!
“We need Hamish Hogstead to be our man on the spot!”
So they sent him right off to Korea, the clot.
Hamish was driven to the Demilitarised zone.
He was going to cross over to the North, alone.
A clandestine mission, so on and so forth!
So off he went, valiantly, to Korea’s dangerous north.
Hamish knew that his duty, much danger involved.
But he laughed at danger if it then solved.
A diplomatic crisis, a world conflict he saw.
A global dilemma, the prevention of war.
So carefully he went, into “no-mans-land,”
He was set upon a task most noble and grand.
The make-up people had disguised him as the North’s Great Leader.
All the elements of the mission, a real fear breeder.
His mission was to instruct the offensive troops,
In perfect Korean, without “an um or an Oops,”
That they should withdraw their positions at once,
Yes, their present positions, they should absconce.
To head north to attack Pyong Yang!
The troops, nervously, the Great Leaders’ praise sang.
But, so fearful they were of disobedience to him,
They did as instructed, in a manner most grim.
So Hamish had de-railed a nasty war,
The North Korean army was purged to the core!
But Hamish, that corpulent quiet achiever,
Received no recognition; no matter, he was a believer,
In the spymaster system of no glory unveiled,
Just so long as sinister plots were de-railed!***

![northern lights.png](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmd9eJZFnzqpzAVk6yNoXEZFM8s1jTT73xqKL8G6RLE9hw/northern%20lights.png)

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