Yesterday, a baby bunny ran over me.
I’m not making that up, although when I recounted the story to my six-year-old, he did not believe me. There are some drawbacks to being a fatherly fabulist: When something crazy happens, the children don’t believe it.
So.
It’s been four years since I last mentioned my children’s sandbox on this blog. Maybe it’s not; maybe that’s just the last memorable mention of it. But in that intervening time, my children have grown up, started shaving, and are being recruited by several prestigious universities for their athletic and mental prowess. Or, fatherly fabulism aside, they’ve grown too old to be terribly interested in the sandbox (although the youngest remains six and might still be interested in it on his own, he’s often drafted into his older brother’s adventures and doesn’t have the time to enjoy the sandbox aside from dumping the sand out of it and filling it instead with landscaping stones). Last year, bermuda grass choked out the square amusement center, and the beach toys faded and became brittle in the sun. So this year, I decided to remove it.
On Friday, before I could get around to doing my normal amount of nothing, I went into the back yard with a hammer, a rake, some gloves, and determination borne of just doing something before thinking about the more fun alternatives to work, such as nothing. I checked to directions in which the boards were nailed together and struck the first side board to separate it from its fellow.
As I banged on it, I felt something on my foot. “A field mouse,” I thought, and I looked down just as the something leapt into the sandbox. It turned, and in its profile, I saw it was a young rabbit that had emerged from a small hole next to the side of the sandbox. It fled through the fence, and when I whacked the board again, its little brother bounded out of the hole and out of the fence as well. The second was courteous enough to not jump on my foot as it went by.
So I really did get run over by a baby bunny yesterday.
If I were a better writer and less lazy, I’d write this up into a full personal memoir essay juxtaposing melancholy about my children growing older with the eternal youth turnover of the small wild animals around Nogglestead. But this is a blog, and I’m just a fatherly fabulist and not Joan Didion.
Look, I can tell, you still don’t believe me. Fine. I’ve got some footage from our security cameras below the fold so you can see how something landed on my foot, and how I startled, screamed like a little girl (although the security camera footage has no sound, you can almost hear the shriek from the way I act), and fled from the icky beast faster than the beast fled from me.
I believe you.
Oh, those poor hlessil!