Winter felt long and imagine my pleasure seeing the first brave flowers of spring, these snowdrops stretching and opening between a crack in the rocks. I was so excited I wrote about it.
And then visited another harbinger of spring: rabbits. Those darn bunny rabbits ate my pretty flowers down to the bone.
“Curse you, dastardly rabbits!”
In an earlier era, we didn’t have a rabbit problem. We had two cats—Storm and Pumpkin. They kept the rabbit population under control. Now only Pumpkin is left, he’s nearing eighteen years old, and is more than ever a lover not a fighter.
There wasn’t much I could do about the flowers, except, “Hex upon you, dastardly rabbits!”
And it worked, at least for one night and one rabbit.
The next day I was walking outside and lo and behold I see a dead rabbit in the side garden. It was a huge one, and not a mark on it or a ruffle in the fur. Looked like it just rolled over and died of sudden fright. I’ve heard that can happen to rabbits.
It had to be a coincidence. I couldn’t have voodooed that thing to death. Yet there it was, its blank, milky eye pointed right at me.
I scooped the carcass with a shovel, crossed the road to the ravine, and launched like a catapult. I shouted no curses, I cast no spells.
The next night, the emerging lilies got munched.
Where there’s one rabbit, there are many.
“I jinx you, dastardly rabbits!”
