A Tale of Two Pups

Last week it was Rabbit, this week it’s Coyote.

Probably because it’s that time of year.

The Wild wakes (not that it ever sleeps) and everyone comes out parading their young.

Kind of like an Easter parade, don’t you think?

And Easter…that christian new life/resurrection thing, that coming out of the cave, out of the earth, out of death, the big sleep as it were…

Why do you think the church decided Easter coincides with Spring?

Everybody honors The Wild even when they don’t mean to.

The Bunlet

Rabbits – at least the kind we have here in southern New Hampshire – are not good parents.

At least not good mothers.

At least in human terms.

Wild rabbits here in southern New Hampshire neither warren nor den. They spend their time above ground and out in the open.

Their young, likewise, are born above ground and in the open. If anything, they may have a cushion of leaves to lie back on.

But not grass. Grass is food to rabbits.

Rabbit mothers leave their kits (baby rabbits are called “kits” or “kitties” and “bunnies” in the vulgate) unprotected while they go off wining and dining and such.

We’d call Family Services if that happened.

Maybe we would.

People have a habit of minding other people’s business and ignoring their own when it suits them.

Back to Bunlets (our term for tiny little baby bunnies).

Thank goodness for their dun coloring.

Good camouflage, that.

And we must also consider that The Wild has perfected rabbits to survive.

At least for now.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

I mean, what if The Wild is doing the same to us?

Just think of all those Family Services people without a job…

The Family Dines With Friends

Post the (US) holiday food coma (for those so fortunate. it’s a pity people don’t realize two-thirds of what they consume could go to the orphan, the widow, the hungry, the weak, the infirmed…
…but this isn’t the time for preaching…) it’s good to remember the joy we had with good friends gathered around the table.

In my case, that was at the Campbell’s in Middleton, Mass. My family would gather there every year for good food and great stories, a game of Chinese Checkers or Scrabble, perhaps Mrs. Stockton would play the piano and play for us.

I didn’t know at the time that Al Campbell and my dad met working in Boston and became friends. It never seemed odd to me that this New Brunswick, Canadian immigrant and my first-generation Italian-American father would hit it off.

Years later Al, who was heavy for as long as I knew him, lost an amazing amount of weight. I didn’t know if it was health or something else. Blanche, his wife, was also a large woman and lost some but not all of her weight.

Mrs. Stockton, Al’s mother, once confided that Al and Blanche would never have children because they were cousins.

My mother understood. I, somewhere between five and nine years old at the time, didn’t.

One day Blanche called us to let us know Al had left her for some woman in northern Maine. How he met her, I don’t know.

Blanche received a letter (handwritten. ah, those were the days) from Al asking her to box up some of his things and to leave them somewhere he could get them.

She did. Being Blanche, she also included an apple pie. Al loved apple pie.

Years later she received another letter from Al telling her how much he treasured that pie. It was one of the kindest things anyone’d done for him in years, he wrote.

My mother made sure we – especially my father – knew the woman Al “shacked up with” beat him regularly, as did her two sons, and that he had to eat that pie in the outhouse because the woman, if she’d known he got it, would’ve taken it from him and beat him all the more.

My mother made sure my father knew this because (as I found out much later) what brought Al and my father together wasn’t work, it was whoring.

Al, according to mom, even hit on her once. While she was pregnant, too! Oh my!

Such are family stories.

Blanche and Mrs. Stockton were good Christian women. Years later I studied biblical matters and they invited me over for dinner. I hadn’t seen them in years.

They were still Blanche and Mrs. Stockton, still knew how to cook, still gracious and kind people.

I would like to say I stayed in touch with them, but I didn’t. My path took me elsewhere.

Way elsewhere.

I hope their Christian belief brought them peace.

And meanwhile, the family dines with friends.

Enjoy.

 

Hey, Sailor! Want to Get Lucky?

Following up on last week’s closing line of “Actions speak louder than words”, we have an…umm…display.

Yeah, that’s right.

A display.

A display of…how to get things done.

I don’t often catch The Wild offering such demonstrations. I definitely don’t go looking for it.

And in some cases, being around when it occurs in The Wild can be downright dangerous.

But how dangerous can bunnies be?

And any who answer “None at all” have never ventured to Caerbannog

 

Once Best of Friends

Keeping up my credos in cultural anthro/folklore/myth society, I note I anthropomorphize The Wild.

Well Excu-use me!

(extra points for any readers who know that reference)

Folklore and Myth anthropomorphize The Wild to teach lessons, offer morality plays, share spiritual meaning, et cetera.

It’s much safer to do so using The Old Ones than to blatantly attribute bad behaviors – idiocy, greed, malice, avarice, and so on – to the individuals still living and still in power.

Doing so often results in a shortened tenure upon the planet.

Interestingly, the only individual who could safely (okay, somewhat safely) get away with doing so is what many cultures recognize as the Sacred Clown.

The Sacred Clown’s primary role was to speak truth to power and they often did so with humor. Many of today’s comedians share that they told jokes as children because they rapidly learned the bullies couldn’t hit you if they were laughing hard.

Sacred Clowns exist throughout history. George Carlin was one. Mort Sahl was another. Down through time they were Jesters, circus performers, thespians, and interestingly they tended to be people either intentionally or by self-design on the outskirts of society.

Better to observe from such positions, don’t you think?

So here we have two Rabbits, perhaps once best of friends, now not talking to each other.

Who know who slighted who, either real or imaginary.

And as that’s an anthropomorphization, I suspect imaginary.

How about you? What do you think?