Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.
~ John Steinbeck
Came out of the house this morning to find a bunny sitting on the front lawn.
Thing is about bunnies in my ‘hood, is that you rarely see them moving. They freeze the second they hear an unfamiliar noise, and stay that way until well after the initial “Hey, there’s a bunny on the lawn!” novelty has has worn off. This one was no different. In fact, he stayed so still for so long that I began to imagine someone had dropped off a really early Laura Secord prezzie for me.
Here in Hamilton, we’ve got a behemothic (can I say that?) bunbun population. We did back in London, too, however those were night-lurkers only, and disappeared the second there was light in the sky. If you were an unfortunate sod like myself, starting work at the most godawful hours, you’d see them huddled at the side of the road, furtively glancing up sideways as you drove by. Mostly, you’d see squirrels. I mean, lots of squirrels.
It helped that Old East Village is lousy with trees. I mean, we had a 25-foot Chestnut out front that dug its roots into the crumbling plumbing a little more each year. All the neighbors had trees, too, and almost all of them were very old, and very big. So the squirrels had their pick of penthouse suites.
Most of the time the prodigious population of squirrels didn’t bother me, but there were two times in particular I could have easily done without them. Once, leaving to drive the kids to school, I came out to what I now regard as one of the biggest “Eww!” moments of my life – one of the furry, bright-eyed little tree-dwellers was in its frenetic death throes right beside the walkway. Had he fallen? I dunno. What I do know is that it was capital C-creepy. I wish I could tell you I’d done something honorable, like sacrificed a pillow and put the poor thing out of its misery in goose down comfort while whispering “Go to the light” into his tiny ear, but really I just decided to sneak out the back way, instead. Got my husband to Hefty bag it when it was all over. Gawd, even writing that, I gave a shudder.
The second SSI (Shocking Squirrel Incident) will be perpetually filed under “What The Fresh Hell Is THIS?!” It was a beautiful summer day. I’d planned to have a G&T on the deck, enjoy the fresh air, read my book, have another G&T, and so forth. Grabbed all my gear and headed out only to find a squirrel doing frantic laps in our Intex pool, having jumped or fallen in, and was now unable to find purchase on the slippery plastic blow-up ring around the top. Now, I had no freaking idea how long this poor bugger had been swimming, but what I did know was that here was my chance to redeem myself for my queasy cowardice with his now-deceased buddy. I grabbed the skimming net with the intent of scooping him up and out – easy peasy lemon squeezy, right? Except I hadn’t factored in that Squirrely, considering me, a human, to be a mortal enemy, would not come to the realization that I was attempting to free him from a certain and imminent watery grave, but that he’d assume I’d come to torture him first. Each time that net got anywhere close to his undercarriage, he’d thrash away from it (I transitioned from sympathy to ‘get-the-fuck-in-the-net-you-goddamned-rodent’ fairly quickly). Finally the exertion, plus at least 200 laps, I’m sure, wore him down, and I bailed him out.
I expected him to make a quick exit, but he was plumb wore out. He just sat there, eyeing me, soaked and pathetic. It took him about half an hour to slowly make his way to the back fence, and another half an hour to get to the garage roof to rest again in safety. A little while after that I heard something that sounded like a two-pound object falling off a roof and hitting a bush in the neighbors’ yard, but I decided to get back to my G&T and not think about that anymore.
So. Here I am in the new-ish ‘burbs of Hamilton, with young trees and bunnies who cannot climb. I rarely see any squirrels.
It’s amazing how little things can help one regain perspective. Life, it appears, is good.
Erin's Clishmaclaver 