La Mort du Lapin

I know, I have delayed this for weeks. This poor creature has long been buried here near our yard (meaning that I buried it in a shallow grave that has since been raided by the local crowd, namely coyotes and possibly Ivan's descendants) for nigh unto two months and I have neglected to perform the necessary rites for his passage to the other world. So to defer any punishment that rapidly approaches me for this crime (think Antigone), I pen this eulogy:



To be, or not to be. That is the question. Whether tis nobler to suffer the tiny BB's of the outrageous air rifle, or to live with the question of 'Do I really want to live in shrubbery grown by a septic tank?' His life; it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The dust devils, the jackalopes, the wind whistling through enormous ears that pick up the melodic sounds of gigantic dogs in rapid rabid pursuit. What are men compared to rocks and rottweillers? Would a rabbit by any other name be as spastic? But the rabbit, he took the road more traveled by, and that has made the difference of six inches under. To err is human, to be an Eyre is divine, and to be a rabbit kind of stinks. Bilbo Baggins lived in a hole, not a sandy shallow hole, or a nasty damp muddy hole, not even a hobbit hole, but a rabbit hole. He came to the yard to live deliberately, to suck all the marrow out of the dandelions. Alas, that was his great mistake. And his last one. For then he made like Bambi's mom and got shot. But do not mourn, for that is the great circle of life, the destiny of the Lagomorpha. And so we bid adieu to this most noble of cottontails, to this champion of the oppressed and the hunted. May you live on to run in the great Septic Tank Swamp of the sky. Adieu, adieu, parting is such sweet sorrow.