My musings on the meaning of the lyrics for that particular song aren't my personal interpretation, I'm merely relaying what Don Van Vliet told me that the lyrics are all about: human evolution. So, it's the author/composer's own interpretation of what the words mean, not mine.

Further, the words I sent were from a typewritten copy of a hand-scrawled sheet of paper from a yellow legal pad, in the composer/lyricist's own hand with a couple "stanzas" written out by John French - all of it done at my request.

Most of the stuff in brackets, or noted parenthetically, is what Don wrote himself in the original. For example, sometimes he'd begin the song with: "Long before song, before song blues...", or sometimes "Song before song..." Making things even more difficult, his voice is double-tracked - and on one take he'd sing "Long" and on a parallel track or subsequent take, he'd sing "Song," and both were blended together in the final mix. Ditto for phrases such as "gonna catch her soon" vs. "gonna catch up soon." In neither case did Don clearly enunciate the consonants and vowels clearly - and when both vocal tracks were blended, you get a simultaneous, slurred "gone-uh-catcher soon" and "gonnuh ketchup soon," at random points, which ends up sounding like he's mumbling in another language. A lot of this happened because the ding-bat producers tended to ping-pong tracks, so old tracks were blended with new stuff and then locked in solidly. If a gaffe or mistake slipped by them, they couldn't really fix it because there was little or no isolation in their four-track masters. And a lot of mistakes slipped by them.

The song is a SPECIFIC reference not necessarily to the candy bar of same name (which was indeed around in '66 and many years before that), but to the '40s/'50s candy wrappers and counter display boxes that featured silhouettes of simians hanging from palm trees. When he was a kid, impressed by the strong graphics, Don named one "Babbette Baboon" and invented a little story about her. The rest is history - with a little help from Herb Bermann.

Please note that the checkerboard pattern on the backside of "Safe As Milk" is a direct cop from the Abba Zaba black and yellow wrapper treatment, which survives until this very day. Originally, the album was supposed to be called "Abba Zaba," the candy people wouldn't grant permission for use of their name and logo.