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