The Freelance Retort: The Heat's Hare

Well, May said things were gonna heat up around here, and May was right….it has.

Not that any of us would have thought that possible a week ago Saturday, when we all broke out the sweaters, again.

But here we are, in June, fending off our first heat wave of the year…all thanks to May.

Never doubt a man with a plan…even if he is just a month.

Over the weekend, Z and I even made our way out to the local beach, for the first time, this year, where we mostly stayed put, sitting under an umbrella speared in the 110 degree sand, because the water was still only a crackly 59 degrees.

If I jumped in 59 degree water most of my body parts would break off and float away…and no one want’s to see that.

So the heat is on…as they say.

Gotta love June!

I’m also out on the back porch, for the first time—again, under the umbrella—and there’s a lot going on.

The squirrels are having some sort of fluffy Rodent Olympics, jumping from tree to tree, chasing each other down fences and over rooftops, for some reason or another.

My guess it has something to do with women squirrels.

Doesn’t that kind of craziness always have something to do with women…squirrels or otherwise?

Just like my cousin back in the 70’s.

But that’s between the squirrels and my cousin; I don’t really want to know what it’s about.

I’m just happy they’re too busy to dig those annoying little holes on my lawn.

Especially my cousin.

Also nice to see after a long, cold off season, the spider is back, and he’s obviously been pretty busy, re-wrapping my entire house up in his web of mystery.

Actually, there’s not much mystery to it…it’s just a spider web. I thought adding the element of “mystery” would make this sound more interesting than it is.

Yeah…I know.

We actually did have a bit of a mystery, though. For some reason, all the tops to our marigolds were disappearing.

Not the whole marigold, just the fluffy tops, which, not to be rude to the rest of the marigold, everyone knows is the best part of the marigold.

However, most of the pepper plant also disappeared, top middle and some of the bottom.

Not to mention my sunflowers that had barely sprouted.

Of course we were quick to blame the squirrels, who get blamed for most things, mostly because of their lack of stealthiness, which is due to their peanut sized brains.

But it wasn’t the squirrels, at all.

Which only goes to show: never be too quick to judge…although with squirrels they’re probably guilty of something else, anyway, so go ahead.

In this case (see, there is a mystery) Z peeked out the back window, early one morning, and there stood, or squatted actually, the cutest little bunny rabbit, noshing on an orange marigold top.

Next thing I know, Z—who is actually a big bunny supporter—is hollering out the kitchen window, “Get out of there…shoosh…go away!” which one would think to be effective in the discouragement of most intruders, if only for its harshness of tone, which Z has perfected to an art form.

I hear all of this ruckus from the third layer of my dream state, which has suddenly been invaded by images of Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny, for reasons that were unbeknownst to me at that time, but soon to be knownst.

I yell down the stairs, half in my dream and half in my bed, “What’s the matter?” which I deemed to be a reasonable question.

Z shouts back, “Get your knees—I’m pretty sure she said knees—out of bed and get down here. There’s a rabbit in the garden eating all the vegetables!”

To which, I reply, “Are you sure it’s not Todd?”—our next door neighbor, who has a pronounced over bite and is often mistaken for a large rabbit.

“No, it’s not Todd! Get down here, now, and deal with it…please!”

Which was the last thing I wanted to hear, because, one, if it was Todd, I would be out there half the morning listening to all of his back ailment stories, and two, Elmer and Bugs were just starting to get interesting.

Luckily, as it turned out, we were dealing with an actual bunny rabbit situation and not an accountant from Queens, so I was already ahead of the game, and there was still a chance I could catch the end of “Morning Joe.”

Of course there was no sign of the little fella by the time I got out there, but the first thing I discovered was that this was an extremely cheap bunny, as he not only ate and ran, but didn’t leave a tip.

To make a long story a little longer—which I can never say enough—and not wanting to use some of Elmer’s more loonier methods of bunny control, I remembered a wise, old garden sage passing on to me a safe, humane method of preventing animals from having their way with your garden, by simply sprinkling some moth balls around the perimeter.