Wabbits

This column, That Nature Show, is about the nature right under your nose: in our backyards, playgrounds and parks!  Stop and look around, you’ll be amazed at what surrounds you.

You all know that my parents moved in with me and then they moved out. It wasn’t like this.  I don’t want to call what happened a failure. I want to call what happened “a fail and pivot,” or “thwarted expectations.” Thwarted expectation is what a friend told me is the essence of all humor. My kids go to his Circus Camp. We are a family of high wire artists, and buffoons.

My son, 9, likes “Pie In The Face,” the “bit” (what clowns call their pranks) that’s a historic clown classic.  I set it  up in the backyard with whipped cream and call it dessert. It’s the easiest dessert I’ve ever made and, actually, it’s kind of like what happened with my parents.

Here’s what they left behind because it wouldn’t fit into their new apartment: patio furniture. Never in my life have I had patio furniture. It’s a suburban rite of passage! With rain-resistant upholstery! And listen carefully, because it will be important,  I said “rain-resistant,” not “rabbit resistant.”

A bit about rabbits. Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman called his circle of confidants, who were willing to run around for him,  conejos, which is Spanish for “rabbits.” (He  was arrested a few months ago in a dramatic bust of underground tunnels.)

My conejos, the ones that live under my deck, their opiate appears to be yes, you guessed it. It is my patio furniture stuffing. They have taken it out in tufts to make their nests. I got down on my hands and knees among the hostas  and screamed under the deck, “Get out of there you filthy rodents! Don’t make me get all humane-trap up in your sweet-woodruff-chomping bucktooth grills.”

But, my daughter, 6, lover of all god’s creatures, and unicorns and fairies, said, “Don’t talk to the rabbits that way Mommy. That’s mean.”