Now, about the Easter Bunny (Bunnies)!
On Easter morn along side my favorite chocolate covered coconut cream Easter egg was a cute box with six baby bunnies. They were the pet store variety – each a different solid color (white, black, gray, brown etc.).
Unlike the gifts of Easter past, these fellas fared very well – however, as fate would decree, they were not all “fellas”. So as nature decreed, the population commenced to practice their own special field of mathematics – multiplication. Soon, my good old Pop had to build a large wire hutch for the backyard to hold our increasing menagerie. Soon, however, the population seemed to stabilize. That our German immigrant neighbors, the Friedhoffers, were making fewer trips to the butchers was a fact that went unnoticed. (Mrs. Friedhoffer had real problems with English and always called me “Spruce”.)
One fine spring day, I left the hutch latch undone, and the Bunnies escaped! It took a few days, but we finally rounded up most of them. A few months later, it became apparent that my domestic bunnies had found some wild friends. Now, there would regularly appear in the surrounding yards and fields the most amazing collection of livestock – native brown rabbits with white legs, brown rabbits with gray heads, black rabbits with brown feet.
Now the local rabbits were a bit of a problem – they were particularly fond of Pop’s Victory Garden – especially the carrots and lettuce. The following year, Pop decided to brook no further ravishment of his war efforts, so he built a stern wire fence surrounding his contribution to national defense. He did, however, plant a second garden of equal size filled with carrots and lettuce which was for the wild rabbits.
So, the Albert household was, again, at peace with nature.
Der Brucer (one dog and one cat story to go)