Well, like to explain to you all before,
I ain't no drinkin' man
I tried it once and it got me highly irregular
And I swore I'd never do it again
I promised my brother in-law that
I'd go up watch his still
While he went in to town to vote
It was right up on the mountain
where the map said it would be
Friends let me tell you one thing,
though it wasn't no ordinary still
It stood up on that mountainside
like a hugh golden opal

God's yeller moon shinin' on the cool clear evenin'
God's little lanterns twinklin' on and off in the heavens
Like I explain'd to you once before I ain't no drinkin' man
But temptation got the best of me
And I took a slash
That yella whiskey runnin' down my throat
like honey dew vine water

And I took another slash,
Took another'n an another'n an another'n
For you knew I'd downed one whole jug of that shit
and commenced to gettin' hot flashes
Goose pimples was runnin' up and down my body
And a feelin' came over me
like somethin' I'd never experienced before
It was like, like I was in love
In love for the first time, with anything that moved
Animate, inanimate it didn't matter
It's like there's a great neon sign flashin' on an' off
in my brain sayin' "Jimmy Buffett there's a great day a comin'"
'Cause I was drunk
I wasn't knee crawlin', slip slidin', Reggie Youngin'
Commode huggin' drunk

I was God's own drunk and a fearless man
And that's when I first saw the bear
He was a Kodiak lookin' fella 'bout nineteen feet tall
He rambled up over the hill
expectin' me to do one of two things,
Flip or fly, I didn't do either one
It hung him up

He started sniffin' around my body tryin' to smell fear
But he ain't gonna smell no fear 'cause
I'm God's own drunk and a fearless man
It hung him up
He looked right in my eyes, and my eyes
was a lot redder than his was
It hung him up

So I approached him, I said "Mr. Bear, I love
every hair on your twenty-seven acre body
I know you got a lot of friends over there
on the other side of the hill
There's ole' rare bear, tall bear, Freddy bear, Kelly bear
Really bear, smelly the bear, smokey the bear,
pokey the bear
I want you to go back over there tonight
And tell them I'm feelin' right
You tell them I love each and everyone of them
like a brother and a sister

But if they give me any trouble tonight
I'm gonna run every God damn one of them off the hill"
He took two steps backwards and didn't know what to think
Neither did I but bein' charitable and cautious
Well hell I approached him again
I said "Mr. Bear, You know in the eyes of the Lord
we're both beasts when it comes right down to it

So I want you to be my buddy, Buddy bear"
So I took ole' buddy bear by his island size paw
and I led him over to the still
He's a sniffin' around that thing cause
he's smellin' somethin' good
I gave him one of them jugs of honey dew vine water
He downed it up right
Looked like one of them damn bears in the circus

Sippin' sasparilly in the moonlight
I gave him another'n an another'n an another'n
For I knew it he downed eight of them
and commenced to doin' the bear dance
Two snips, a snort, a fly turn, and a grunt
It was so simple like the jitter bug
It plum evaded me

We worked ourselves into a tumultuous uproar
And I was awful tired and went over to the hillside
and I laid down and went to sleep
Slept for four hours and dreampt me some tremulous dreams
When I woke up, there was God's yeller moon
shinin' on the clear cool evenin'

God's little lanterns twinklin' on and off
in the heavens
My buddy the bear was a missin'
Want to know something else friends and neighbors
So was that still