June 09, 2009

Die Rabbits, Die!

If you're a serious gardening type, there's nothing more maddening than to spend the better part of a day digging, planting, watering and generally nurturing your flower and vegetable plants and then get up the next morning and look out to see a hoard of fucking rabbits eating everything that you just sweated your balls off the previous day putting in the ground.

Even if you're not so serious, like me, and wander around your yard like a stoned Johnny Appleseed with a tray of plants and a trowel, sticking plants randomly in the ground, you still get pretty goddamned agitated.

Jan and I spent one whole day during the Memorial Day weekend putting flowers in, and the next day half of them had been eaten by rabbits.  This happens every year.  And every year I swear that I'll never buy another flower ... but then I forget, and like a stupid, giddy asshole, go out the next Spring and buy some more.

After the initial assault by the ravenous leporidae, we mixed up a batch of pepper spray and coated the remaining plants, but the next morning, the rabbits had donned sombreros and fake Pancho Villa 'staches and were still munching away.

This morning I was looking out the back window and saw one of the little fucks nibbling away at one of the few remaining flowers.  I red veil came down over my eyes and I stormed out the back door, grabbed a brass water nozzle and hurled it at the piece of shit.

Amazingly, I hit it right in the head and it went down like a ton of bricks.  I ran toward it, but it managed to struggle to its little paws and hop away just before I could grab it and wring its neck.  They may have won the war so far, but at least I was victorious in one small battle.

I worked with a guy who got so upset with rabbits eating his plants that he would fire his shotgun at them from the back door.  He said his neighbors never complained, but I think they were more frightened of him than complacent in the matter.  He told me that the buckshot would usually shred up the plant that the rabbit was eating, ruining it anyway, but at least he got to see the fur fly.

We started calling him Elmer Fudd, which he didn't seem to mind at all.

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