Easy to do
fiction by Luke O’Neil
Updates from my backyard March 2025
Technically speaking it wasn’t quite spring just yet but this little rabbit didn’t know that. It was running undisciplined routes across the yard like a rookie slot receiver and now came back around for another sniff of the dead garden near where I sat thinking about the concept of spring. In this iteration it had its mouth stuffed with big sprigs of desiccated straw that jutted out either side and made it look like it was wearing a fake mustache. Like it was doing a bit. She was doing a bit. Gathering building material for a nest I presumed. I moved as slowly as I could to get close enough to take a picture thinking I would send it to my wife. We had had a fight last night and I hoped it would remind her how gentle I mostly am. The fucking rabbit wouldn’t pose correctly though and I was trying not to make any sudden moves that would scare her off. Scaring a rabbit off is so easy to do. One of the easiest things in the world. I took three or four snaps before my looming spooked her and texted them out and waited a few impatient minutes for a bunny and kissy face emoji in response and now felt square as regards that. That someone believed that I was still a good man. I looked over toward the neighbor’s yard and felt the absence of two tall thin arborvitae they had had cut down recently and got pissed off about that anew. I wanted to give the guy a piece of my mind. I always imagined they looked like they belonged somewhere else. California perhaps. Art Deco trees. Out of time. But after they were gone I realized they belonged right where they were here in New England. I looked them up later to get the name right and this is so stupid but arborvitae obviously means the tree of life. I probably should have been able to work that one out on my own via 8th grade Latin. God it must have been so much easier to name things then. Back whenever they named everything. Walking around pointing at plants and animals and rivers that no one had ever bothered to call what they are called before. To differentiate one from the other. I thought I should name my bunny in question here. That I could name every single one that had ever run away from me if I had to.
Keep us breathing fire!
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