A smoother version of the bass, heard in conversation long ago:

Of all the fishes in the seas,
The strangest is the bass.
It climbs into the tops of trees
And slides down on its hands and knees
To frolic in the grass.

SharonA: In _archy and mehitabel_ by Don Marquis we read:

the honey bee is sad and cross
and wicked as a weasel
and when she perches on you boss
she leaves a little measle

May be older than Ms Van Laan's version. The archy poems started coming out in 1916 and continued till 1926. archy was a cockroach who wrote by jumping on the keys of Mr Marquis's typewriter; he could not manage the capital shift.