Reports Of a Giant, Rabid Cheetah Were Greatly Exaggerated. Sort Of.

Monday is trash pick up day in Frog Pond Holler. They can't afford to drive the garbage truck, what with the price of gas and all, so Percy and Larry come around in Percy's little 1996 Ford Ranger. When they get the bed full, they run back to the lot behind town where the trash truck is parked and toss it all inside, then at the end of their run, they take the trash truck out to the landfill to dump it.

All this will matter in just a second. Bear with me.

I don't really know Percy, other than to throw my hand up when I pass him on the road. He's about 157 years old and probably doesn't have the foggiest clue who he's waving at, doing it more from habbit than recognition. Larry, on the other hand, used to work with Ma down at the work center for deveolpmentally disabled adults. Larry was sort of a handy man, not one of the clients. His rabbit beagle, coincidentally, was also the Baby Daddy to the litter of Boston Baked Beagles that produced my Sammy.

It's life in the holler. We're all related one way or another.

So yesterday morning I was getting in the shower and I knew from Yoda's growling that Percy's little Ranger was in front of our house, gathering up our week's worth of Coke Zero bottles, apple cores and rabbit poop. I didn't think anymore of it, doing the ass-crack-of-dawn-fat-girl-stagger in to the shower.

I'll spare you the details of my actual shower. I love ya'll, but not like that.

Anywho...

So as I pulled the shower curtain back, Ayla came charging in to the bedroom, leaving Sammy and Yoda barking at the front door, like someone was out there. An intelligent person would have put on clothing before going to the door to peer outside, but this is me we're talking about here. Pre-coffee, home alone, slightly paranoid me.

I grabbed the nearest thing I could find, a king sized cheetah print fuzzy bedspread I'd used as a seat cover over in the girl cave. Wrapping it around me, I tried to coral the hounds and open the door, just a skotch, to see what the samhill was going on.

My heart stopped for a second when I saw the front door/gate thingie to the bunny enclosure (no longer just a hutch... don't judge me) standing open. Forgetting the minuscule measure of common sense I had left, I bolted out the door on to the porch, running around to the bunny hutch and lifting the lid.

No bunnies.

The old porch chair with the rush seat that Ma had painted white back when she still possessed more than the occasional moment of clarity.. and that I use to anchor the side door shut.. had been moved.

SOMEONE STOLE MAI BUNNEHS!!!

I ran down the steps and began wildly assessing the crime scene. My mind was racing. Why would someone steal my lopsided rabbits who poop too much and smell like boy pee? And how did they catch them? Was it a money starved crack head who thought they could trade them to a bunny loving drug dealer for a fix? Could it have been one of the starving homeless hippies that set up an illegal camp up next to the old mine, hoping for some bunny stew???

I was in a panic. Seriously. And while I hadn't figured out who it would be, I knew I was gonna kill a bunny grubbing motha effer before the sun set on that day.

Then I spotted something white under the truck. I leaned over, peering beneath it...

REGINALD!!!

It was also then that I realized I was bent over in the front yard, my ass pointed towards the highway and the only thing between me and nekkidness was a cheetah print bedspread.

And ya'll wonder why I'm still single.

I told Reggie to stay put while I ran back inside.. mind still spinning with a million and one scenarios. Maybe I didn't latch the door all the way when I put Reggie back inside the night before. But there was someone on the porch.. I knew there had to have been. But then again, The Amazon had been gone to Tennessee for a few days to visit Long Lost Daughter and the youngins and the dogs HAD been kinda on edge with a pack member gone missing.

No. Someone had to have been on the porch.

I pulled on some pj pants and a tee shirt, slipped on my Crocs and put Ayla and Yoda out the back door. I didn't need them having a full blown caniption at the screen door while I tried to figure out if I was rescuing bunnies or retrieving little smooshed bunny corpses and who's ass I was going to introduce to my Fred Flintstone foot.. sideways.

I headed back out the front door and the second my foot hit turf, the skies opened up and began spewing tiny little ice balls all around. Yoda was displeased. I'm pretty sure his displeasure was evident to people several miles away.

I stuck my head back under the truck, but Reginald was gone. I started across the yard to check under T.A.'s wrecked Blazer and caught something moving out of the corner of my eye. My precious lopsided Cicero was in the MIDDLE OF THE ROAD heading straight for the diner.

So now I'm running in my pjs and Crocs down the middle of the highway a'hollerin' "Cicerooooo.. Sisssseeee booooooiiiiii"... because.. ya know.. bunnies will totally turn and run and jump into your arms with  glee when you chase them.. being prey animals and all... NOT.

He took off like a bat outta hell and then I swear, he looked back over his shoulder and stopped like.. "HEY!! It's the CARROT LADY!!! HI CARROT LADY!!!" and there he sat and waited to be picked up.

It was about this time that some Bubbahubby went by in his pickup, on his way to work no doubt, getting his early morning entertainment watching the crazy old fat lady talking to her bunny in the middle of the road.

I deposited Cicero in the bunny hutch.. enclosure.. effin' townhouse.. whatever.. and went back to search for Reginald, who had magically reappeared under the truck.. LIKE A NINJA. Reginald who, after witnessing the embarrassing spectacle of his poor lopsided brother being chased down the middle of the road by the nutbar carrot lady, decided to save himself the indignity and turn himself in, hopping casually up the ramp and to the door of the rabbit.. thing, waiting patiently for me to open the door and let him in.

Hairy. Little. Jerk.

There was only enough time left to throw some clothes on and maybe some mascara and get to The Asylum.  I had to stop at the campground store and buy a pre-made egg biscuit because I'd taken the junk to lower my blood sugar before I got in the shower, then ran all over the yard and all up and down the road without eating and the last thing I wanted to do was stagger into the office and collapse to the floor mumbling about bunnies and sissy boys in front of the new boss.

I worried all day over whether someone had tried to steal them, turned them loose for meaness or if I'd just not latched everything back the night before. When I got off work, I had about an hour before I had to start taking calls, so I went to the dollar store to see what I could round up in the way of rabbit townhouse security. I ended up with two padlocks and two choke chains.. the only kind of chain you can buy at the dollar store.

No I didn't put the choke chains on the bunnies. Don't look at me like that.

I did, however, use them to add extra security to the doors, adding the padlocks, so that I could work without worrying someone was trying to bunnynap my angoras.

The bunnies, they are on lock down.

It's taken me a day of pondering, rehashing and calming my little ass down to realize what probably happened. I'd say I probably did forget to latch the door properly and when they ran out of food, Cicero probably started jerking on the feeder, which is attached to the door. Dude does NOT like it when he runs out of food. I had to put in a second feeder to make sure Reginald didn't starve to death.

Anywho, so that's probably how they got out. I'd say either Larry or Percy knocked on the door to tell me they were loose, but when I didn't answer they went on. That's what set the dogs off. I never heard them actually knocking, because I was in the shower.. doing shower things. At the ass crack of dawn. Pre-coffee.

That's what I'm telling myself anyway. But the locks are staying... for the time being anyways.

So yeah.. that was MY Monday. I hope ya'lls went better.

We'll talk again soon. Later Taters!!!



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