In my genetic code there is embedded a grounded circuit, this has caused many problems for my extended pool while I have grown up and down. Familial tutelage has tried to curb the outcomes without much success. Hereditary were the founders of my misdeeds and often the preemptive exterminator of deeds undone.
So it is with DNA, our traits go on while the trail ends. The same eyes or nose, a familiar tick, a fear of spiders, disdain for broccoli, cowlicks and red hair, freckles and missing teeth. In other words, God's joke continues, just the audience changes.
This is where I found my daughter Lauren demonstrating hand me down genes. One summer day, out of school, nothing to really occupy the small areas between the grey matter, she found herself in the possession of a small defenseless rodent.
Raising my children I felt that rabbits might insure gentility to counter act the evils of the world. I had read Marjorie Williams “Velvetine Rabbit” late in life and wondered how such an incredible book had slipped past my parents in my proper rearing. With new bunny induced charity and clarity, I read other great rabbit works; Beatrix Potter's “Benjamin Bunny”, Lewis Carol's “Alice in Wonderland” and Richard Adams “Watership down”. Hazel, Fiver, Benjamin, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail all wrought a sensitive change on my cruder side of reality.
With a passion of being a perfect parent I built a hutch complete with loft, lights and ramp. My rabbit husbandry was a diligent effort of parental supremacy. I figured the herd of hares raised by my paternal kin would give them the upper hand of kindness, tenderness, responsibility and charity. This theory proved out to be exactly opposite in application.
Resuming,
Lauren with a small beloved innocent creature of God in her hands, sees between the slat boards of the territorial fence of our neighbors property and ours the snorting snout and pulsing nose of the cordoned in "Canis lupus familiaris"...or better known as the Olson's Labrador Retriever "Ben". Curiosity serves more than cats and with bunny in hand a timid creature is introduced behind the security of cedar boards.
Snorts increase and nasal flecks flume out between the cracks and the "Lepus Capensis" or better known as "Buttercup" recedes into the cupped hands of the reckless god.
Seeing that this only stimulated her curiosity, Buttercup was propped over the fence ledge; small paws and head barely above the beam. Below situated with a perfect upward view was Ben, mouth open, tongue lagging the outside of his jowls, and eyes wide open intent on the prize. Ben watched as the cottontail recoiled back down into the upstretched arms of my daughter. Ben was old; arthritis had taken the retriever out of the lab. The best he could do was watch as this unlikely fortuitous event unfolded above him.
Again Lauren pushing her luck and the rabbit's life perched her on the ledge again. To Ben it must have seemed as a "pop goes the weasel" play with a rabbit as the understudy of the day. To worn out to leap, he barked his adulation for the act above him.
Somewhere in the gene pool that grounded circuit found its short, afflicted Lauren swooned then hefted then released the rabbit that went skyward where few rabbits ever go on their own fruition. As gently as a 10 year old with freckles and converse shoes can do, the rabbit fell to open grasping hands.
To Ben's amazement and his view, the furry enticement was levitating high above the boarded border. With the credulity that there was a god dog, Ben's head bobbed up and down in a graceful glide as if in a nod of agreement and anticipation. The rabbit, legs flailing and ears waving winged the air as if to control the accent from and decent into the eager hands that received it. Up went the rabbit; down came the rabbit, each time with adulation from the admirer of hungry fan below.
It is here in the story that we must approach that which we wish not to hear. Let it suffice to say happiness is the story that might have been, but instead by one small error in trajectory it was Hasenpfeffer for old Ben.
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