Butter Side Down

Juan, the baby bunny!

This little rascal is very skittish, unlike his parents, Stewart and Petunia. It’s taken me three weeks to get any photos of him at all, as he’s (wisely) quite wary of us. He’s the boldest of his litter, however, which includes only one other bunny at this point. Petunia did have several other babies in this litter, but from what we can tell the female Cooper’s Hawk who has taken up residence nearby has taken quite a toll.

Juan is a flower mowing machine, the most destructive baby bunny we’ve had in years — which is saying a lot! He delights in reaching up as far as he can, whilst standing on his hind legs, to nibble off the tops of flowers. He’s perfectly happy mowing them down from the bottom, side and middle, too, and happily strips the leaves off of plants he doesn’t find tasty, just on general principle as far as I can tell.

I don’t have any photos of his little sister, Hay, yet. We usually see her just as a miniature bunny-colored streak racing from one hiding place to another!

Sometimes… life happens. I’m still here… just having a bit of difficulty using my ‘puter as I’m dealing with a nasty uber-flare of neck and back problems that has lasted over four weeks now. The result: certain activities, like looking at a computer screen, are even more limited than usual.

Blech.

Bunnies are fine, no good baby bunny photos yet but I took some vid of one noshing down a gladioulus that I’ll share. Lots of other photos and stories to tell…

Back soon. I hope!

My buddy Kris tagged me this morning with a meme. So, since I’m SUCH a team player, here goes:

The rules:

1. Post the rules of the game at the beginning.

Check.

2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.

Um, with questions that all ask “what are your…” or “what are you…,” just who else precisely would the questions be for? Perhaps there might be some confusion if I owned a pair of goldfish I’ve named “You” and “Your,” but otherwise, isn’t this rule covering something a trifle… well… obvious?

3. At the end of the post, the player then tags five people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read the player’s blog.

I can see a slight process problem, as Kris (who tagged me) has already tagged everyone I would tag. We’ll just skip this rule.

4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

Check. I’ll go do that in just a moment.

On to the questions!

What were you doing five years ago?

You have GOT to be kidding - five years ago? Like I keep track of what I ate for breakfast today, much less what I was doing 1825 days ago? I think not. Humph. Next question.

What are five things on your to-do list for today?

Hm. Another tricky question. Maybe create a “to-do” list? Nah. Why do that, when I can use my trusty ‘projects and tasks’ spreadsheet? It even lets me enter weighted priorities to figure out what needs getting done first and tells me if it’s even possible to finish something in the available time. Note: having a spouse who is a spreadsheet programming wizard can have unexpected benefits, including nifty spreadsheets that explode when you say you have one minute available but need 10,000 hours for your backlog of household- related critical priority tasks. Undermining software can be so entertaining!

What are five snacks you enjoy?

Shortbread cookies - my own recipe. Cheesecake - my own recipe. Parfaits - my own recipe. (Are we seeing a pattern here?) Fresh sliced strawberries and bananas smothered in Sibbey’s vanilla ice cream. Anything made with tart cherries and lots of sugar. I do not enjoy celery, skimmed milk, raw broccoli or any other tasteless substitute for real food. So there.

What are five things you would do if you were a billionaire?

Probably what I’m dong right now, except with money.

What are five of your bad habits?

Bad hobbits? Are there bad hobbits? I thought they were all nice, like Frodo and Sam and besides, I don’t own any hobbits - wouldn’t that be slavery? What? Oh. Bad habits. Now I’m even more confused. I don’t wear a habit! Only nuns and sisters wear habits! I wear ordinary street clothing… Have the rules changed? Am I supposed to be wearing a habit? And why would I want a “bad” habit? What’s that? Oh. Can you repeat the question?

What are five places where you have lived?

In my imagination. Nice place, most of the time. Oops. Sorry. You meant physical locations. Lemme see… suburb of Detroit… Big 10 University city. Big 10 University suburb. Different Big 10 University city. Yet another Big 10 University suburb. Small village in Wisconsin.

What are five jobs you’ve had?

Paying or unpaid? Volunteer? Mandatory? First job I had was dusting and mopping my room. The pay was lousy (not suprising, as it was unpaid forced labor - parents can be so darn mean). Hated it. Still do. That’s why if you come into my house and complain about dust bunnies you’ll be given a choice between dusting and mopping yourself, or taking the top sheet from a pad of post-it notes, writing an appropriate dust-bunny-type name on the top sheet (e.g. “Fang”), and tagging the nearest critter. After all, if it’s a pet, then it belongs, right? Of course right. Perfectly logical.

Then there was my second job, which entailed ironing my Dad’s handkerchiefs so they were precisely square and perfect and fit all military specs. Then there was –

Oh, quit grimacing! I’ll stop now!

Memes. Humph.

We had a little ‘incident’ here last Thursday.

Our village public works department decided to ‘water jet’ the sanitary sewers for preventative maintenance. Basically, the task involves using a truck to pump water at very high pressures through a municipality’s sewage systems, to prevent blockages from developing in the sanitary sewers.

If you, Oh Best Beloved, haven’t ever heard of water jetting, I have one piece of advice:

Be afraid. Be very afraid if your municipality decides to buy this type of equipment.

Visualize this scene:

Michael and I were in our kitchen, enjoying a late lunch when we heard a gurgle coming from our pipes… a distinctive gurgle… the gurgle that says our normally sane municipality has hauled out the “water jetting” equipment and failed to contact us, as they had promised, after we had problems LAST time they water jetted.

See our horrified expressions? No? Well, trust me. We had horrified expressions, the type of expression Indiana Jones has when he drops into a snake pit.

Now, visualize Michael as he ran frantically down the hallway to our bathroom, because from past experiences we know that:

Satan has taken possession of our toilet.

Yep. We needed a toilet exorcist, because water was shooting straight up, in a demonic swirling geyser - and it wasn’t clean tap water.

Being an intrepid soul, Michel did what I did last time our village helpfully jetted the sewers: slammed the lid on the toilet.

So, we had Michael holding down the toilet lid, with water (laced with you-know-what) boiling out around the edges of the toilet seat.

*AAAIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!*

As I frantically dialed the village’s public works department to tell them to shut the freakin’ equipment off, Michael lunged across the bathroom (leaving one hand holding down the toilet lid), grabbed a toilet plunger we own, whipped up the toilet seat and slammed the plunger into the toilet, blocking the outlet-turned-inlet.

Result: Michael, feet braced, leaning with considerable force into the toilet, became the living plug in the sewage dike. The sewage, not to be thwarted, blew the drain cover up in the bathtub and spewed all over inside the tub.

At least I got through to the work crew and got them to turn the equipment off well before the bathtub overflowed…

Oh, yeah, this was just SO what we needed in our lives.

*Sigh.*

The village says that they’ll try to remember to call us when they do this again (Again? AGAIN?!) in two years and use ‘lower’ power in our section of the village.

Right.

Like that’s happened the last three times they did this — with the same results in not only our house but other homes.

We spent the afternoon and a large part of the evening cleaning then disinfecting our entire bathroom.

Talk about sh– happens…

Ferns aren’t supposed to sneeze. Given that little fact of nature, I was rather startled when I went past the bank of ferns that are behind our house this afternoon and heard a very distinct sneeze.

Then… I started to laugh.

*Judy stands with her hands behind her back and says in a very sing-song voice, “I know that you’re in there! That’s you, Missus Bunny! You’ve got baby bunnies!”*

To confirm my suspicions, I carefully studied the ferns from a prudent non-bunny-disturbing distance, and finally pinpointed a spot where I could see a set of bunny whiskers amidst the plants. Yep. Missus Bunny was hiding in the ferns. Michael and I have named her Petunia, by the way. We’re calling her Pet for short…

When I had the audacity to reach over and pluck a fern frond that was growing into the pathway several feet from her hiding spot, Petunia indignantly hopped out. She then skittered across the yard, radiating “I’m just a lone bunny, all by myself, you can just pay attention to me hopping over here. Nope, nothing under the ferns you need to bother looking at. Really. Move along.”

I wasn’t snookered.

She’s about half the size she was two weeks ago. Also, I’ve found tufts of bunny fur here and there buried in little rabbit scratches. Momma bunnies dig scratches like that and line them with tufts of their own fur when they’re testing out potential nursery sites.

I can’t wait to see this year’s little dandelion chompers!