Everything’s Coming Up Bunnies

As is my annual Good Friday habit, it is once more time to revisit that Day of Infamy from my childhood, the moment of unadulterated terror in which I learned the hard way that Rabbits Are Not To Be Trusted, that eternally fluffy nightmare vision of long-eared dread…the Bunny Story.

Look at those bouncy bastards, plotting the ruin of everything that is good and decent in the world (and also eating fish, for some reason). [Image originally published in a serial in 1873 — see it in context here: https://archive.org/details/stnicholasserial292dodg/page/735/mode/1up?view=theater]

The tragically amusing tale in brief (first told here on some version or other of my blog back in 2015; see it in its more-or-less original glory here) is this: When I was a very small child, my parents hid a GIANT inflatable Easter Bunny in a coat closet. When I unexpectedly opened that closet in search of hidden Easter eggs, the horrid thing jumped out and tackled me (it had been wedged in tightly against the coats — Dad was in a hurry). While my parents — who are lovely people, please don’t get me wrong — were naturally sympathetic to my horror and distress at being bum-rushed by a blow-up bunny, it was also undeniably the funniest thing they had seen all year. They reacted accordingly.

Over the years since, they have also (as previously noted) engaged in various acts of rabbit-related comedy, and we’ve all had jolly good fun with giant cards, threats to purchase ANOTHER DAMNED INFLATABLE RABBIT, etc., ad inf., ad naus. I thought, what with the pandemic slowing things down on the bunny front, that perhaps my fluffy-tailed travails were ended. The Plague Years had made us sadder, wiser, more sober people, no longer so much amused by the slapsticky entertainment of watching an inflatable rabbit scare the bejeezus out of someone.

I did not reckon on my sister-in-law and her obsession with clothing my dogs.

Behold, The Terrier-Rabbit of the Apocalypse (and his tongue mlem)

In addition to the ears, Henry also received a gift of two small and very squeaky carrots (which Buddy will thoroughly destroy) and a Harry Potter costume.

I am doomed. I give in. It’s rabbits all the way down, so I might as well enjoy myself. If anybody needs me, I’ll be at the bar.

Dagnabbit, rabbit!

*sigh*