Quite the Life (and all in Times New Roman 10pt!)
My peanuts, that is.
What filthy minds you have.
Charlie is off camera in this video.
Sneaky chipmunk that he is.
He waits.
For his peanuts.
Happy to provide.
And for the Bunnies, too. Calvin here. Or Kelvin.
Their accent, you know.
Must spend more time learning Lepin.
You know any good books you can recommend?
Depending on time of year…
And animal species…
Children abound.
Some are four legged, some are feathered.
Some slither and dither.
The Wild is particular about birthing young.
Generally, it likes young to have Spring through Fall to fatten, to prepare for Winter.
There are many strategies involved.
One which is not closely tied to seasons is Rabbit. Rabbit’s strategy is to have a lot of young and often.
But Rabbit doesn’t do a great job of mothering. Births occur in the open and young are left unattended while parents forage.
Not so with Brother and Mother Coyote.
Coyote protects her children fiercely.
Except around me and mine.
Somehow, we are known to be safe.
For which we’re glad.
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.
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…
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.