Long ago when I was a kid I had some pet rabbits. I raised them as part of a 4H
project. I had so hoped to be a cattle baron someday. Such was not to be. We lived in town, and my pleas fell on deaf ears. No, you may not have cows. So: I had to make do with plastic cattle, horses, and a mule, which I lined up and would play with long after I should have moved on to something else. Please don't tell anyone.
I got the rabbits - and from a smoke-colored doe and an amber-gold buck I raised a number of litters, which ended up being taken as pets by other kids,
and some I sold to various heartless dutchmen who fattened and ate them.
The buck, whose name was Buck, was quite a rabbit. He ended up weighing in at 14 lbs - an impressive heft. As I mentioned, he was an honey-colored, blocky beast and tame, too. Often times I would bring him into the house, and it was nothing to get him to make his dung onto a pie-plate, so long as it was set in a corner . He was way-up-big, as they say, had big, padded feet, a set a nuts like a Chester White Boar. Most of his days were spent taking naps and twitching his nose. At night he was active, would thump his foot LOUDLY whenever startled and seemingly vanish into thin air, only to reappear in another room or from under the davenport. I remember he was curious about TV. He would slowly hop up, stare and sniff the screen, illumned in the blue-white light, you could see the veins in his ears, like an X-ray. Maybe he thought those things on TV were real, just behind a window.
Mr. Buck lived to a very advanced age, surviving into my high-school years, long after I had abandoned 4-H and my plastic herd. The only problem I ever had with him was once he had a boil on his lower jaw, which we lanced and swabbed with iodine. He didn't care much for the procedure and what with his kicking, clawing, kangaroid feet neither did I. Clawed the hell out of one of my arms. He had to eat soft food only for a couple weeks after that episode, but he made a full recovery.
When he got old and died, I wrapped him in a t-shirt and buried him in the back yard, with the last cup of his grain, he died right on time, made a crucifix out of sticks and set it up over him.
The next day I kinda missed him, dug him up for a second last-look, petted him a few times, buried him again. I really hated to see him go!
Years passed. I was in college, living in a dormitory. My roommate had a Playboy magazine, which I had a look at.
Then as now, I read text really, really fast, and words that are interesting will catch my eye. While perusing that issue I noticed there was an interview with Marlon Brando, the famous entertainer. The word 'rabbit' sort of hopped out- and I read an anecdote that said he, too, had once lived in Nebraska, and had a pet rabbit as a child, buried it, and then dug it up for another final look. Wow, I thought, that's different.
And Hugh Heffner, the publisher of Playboy, I have been told he is from Nebraska. And there is a rabbit logo on every one of those magazines he sells. My Dad once saw him on TV and growled "Look at that pipe-suckin pimp."
I figure in the next life, about every ten-thousand years or so, Messers Brando, Heffner and myself will wander to the same spot. And I will bring up this anecdote, and the connections inherent in it that bind the three of us together in such a special way.
There will be embarrassed silence, I suppose. And then we will go our separate ways, and do whatever there is to do in eternity. And then we will wander to a like spot again. We will have forgotten whatever the hell it is/was we have/had in common, until I figure it out and bring it up again. Repeat. Ad infinitum.
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Once when I was a child I saved my allowance and ordered a Sea Monkey kit. I had grand plans for the sea monkeys. I wanted to teach the tiny brine shrimp to swim through hoops and lick my fingers.
Anyway, I was about 8 or 9 I suppose and when I received the Sea Monkeys, I became frightened. I think what scared me the most was the responsibility involved in raising sea monkeys. I mean, the king sea monkey on the box looked quite regal! How could I be expected to provide a home for such a fellow? I thought that perhaps I was not up to the task. So I buried the box in the back yard of our house on 58th street.
I felt the urge to dig them up several times, and to muster up the nerve to hatch the sea monkey eggs and release them from their embryonic neverland, but I never did. I suppose that they are there to this day.
Hello cheesetoast3000! Thank you for your comment. Return often and leave some more!
You know, I once saw some program on the educational TV and it talked about sea monkies at length. The thing is, if that container is water-tight, those bad boys are probably STILL GOOD! Brine shrimp often live in salt lakes out in deserts that seldom see rain. Those sea monkey eggs can and do last for years! Even centuries. I don't know about freezing temps tho.
I, too, was taken in by the king sea monkey! Some company that sold them advertised heavilly in comic books when I was a kid.
"INSTANT LIFE" was their ad slogan. And the illustration showed those sea monkies cavorting around like so many aqua-people at an undersea picnic. I was led to believe these creatures were intelligent, sociable and cute!
My folks wouldn't allow me to send in for the "INSTANT LIFE" kit. "Foolishness" they said.
Years later, and I was out on my own, living in the big, sorry-ass red firetrap of a house I describe in "Box of Bugs" (below).
I had a girlfriend who had wanted sea-monkies as a child, but lived in Idaho or some damn thing. There was some reason why she couldn't have them, I forget why. So we went and got some at a downtown joke shop.
It wasn't long before the tank was indeed alive with them. They were not the darling lil aqua-gnomes on the box. In fact, they looked like teeny weeny undulating spinal chords with two woggly eyes attached. Frankly, I was disgusted. It was only with time that I grew to know the joys of sea-monkey love.
I stuck a newspaper photo of Bob Devaney on the side of their tank, facing in. For some whacked reason I had always hoped that a colossal ghost-Bob would materialize over a stadium full of people yelling "LOOK OUT - I'M A COMIN'! SHOOOO!" I should think the fan's reaction would be sensational!
It would be even better if it happened in China! None of the people in the stadium would know what the hell he was saying! And they would be drawn to the amazing sight of him, even tho he said "Shoooooo!" The irony is delicious!
Well, that won't ever/didn't ever happen. But my sea monkies did have a giant Bob-face in their faces, night and day. It was a happy time.
Sadly, my sea monkies came to an abrupt end. I had a roommate whose anality was the stuff of legend. And, he claimed, he thought they were mosquito larvae growing in a dirty dish! He flushed them all. Fortunately there were no hand-guns in the house.
A friend of mine had heard of our (albeit brief) sea-monkey joy, and he went downtown to the joke shop and bought some too.
I am sad to say the man was not a model of sea-monkey husbandry. He grew to hate them, how they just swam around and didn't do anything interesting. That, and their spinal-chordy, woggle-eyedy appearance.
He began to purposefully poison his sea monkies with beer swill and dumped ash trays into the tank. He was and is a bitter man - a physicist, and I believe he now works in a remote convenience store up in the mountains.
Suprisingly, his sea monkies thrived in that hellish medium.
He kept them in his apartment on a window sill for several years, and who knows how many generations of them were begatted.
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