You are not going to believe this, but the Easter Bunny came to our house Easter Sunday. It has been a long time since I actually believed in the Easter Bunny, but the fact is, he left a nicely packaged white chocolate Easter Bunny on my computer keyboard sometime during the darkness of night. So how can I not believe?
Later that same morning as I wandered out to tend my avian collection, I saw his distant cousin, Peter Cottontail, hopping along, not his bunny trail, but along our newly rototilled kitchen garden. Only the garlic is planted there yet, but I suspect, by the way he jumped about, kicking his heels high in the air, that he was happy, with high hopes of what he saw in his imagining mind.
Foxy, our long-legged, geared for high-speed house dog, who is usually at my side but not so at this precise moment, left me with little more than a feeble verbal challenge of what would happen to rabbits that nibble straight planted rows when she got back.
Foxy has taken on the burden, though occasionally, by forgetfulness, crashing through herself, of keeping Peter and his colleagues out of our lettuce patch.
It was only moments later that Peter decided to kick up his heels again, startling a head-down, tail-pointing skyward robin that was digging for worms beside a daffodil patch that circled the one lone beat up pine that survived the tornado. He hopped on across our newly graded outbound lane and took a look at the rhubarb and asparagus row, which is planted just beyond the drip line of the RV bay roof.
It was planted there to take advantage of the extra water when it rains, but Peter just scoffed at both plants and nibbled a cloverleaf or two that had popped up in the low-cut lawn.
Then Foxy showed up, bounding around the corner of the barn. Needless to say, the mood and leisurely bouncing attitude of both of them suddenly changed. Peter, having been chased by Foxy before, seemed to know exactly what to do.
He made three or more short dashes, in seemingly several directions at the same time, while Foxy twisted and tumbled at every turn. Then he took off in a mad dash beeline for the low cedar-railed road fence that was several hundred straight-line yards away.
Foxy excelled well in these unencumbered chases. After gaining composure from several tumbles in a row, she took off in pursuit with just short of thirty-foot bounds, only to snap her teeth-lined jaws just fractions of inches behind a cotton whitetail that disappeared under the fence.
Crash! Poor Foxy had done it again, as she had oft times before, and it is hard to regain composure having been stopped by smacking headlong into something as paltry as a cedar rail fence, over which she could have easily jumped.
Peter scooted across the road into what the nursery rhymes, I recall, referred to as his neighbourhood briar patch. Meanwhile, Foxy went to bask once again in the sun on the front lawn and lick her rabbit caused bruised wounds.
That, folks, was a three-minute, start-to-finish narrative of what goes on here at Westwind Farms. We have very few dull moments.
Take care, ‘cause we care.
barrie@barriehopkins.ca
519-986-4105