An apple a day...

Bristly bark jostling within the jowls,  mounds of succulent foliage melting in the mouth, the tenderest of tendrils tickling my tongue...It's not every day I wax poetic about a mid-morning snack! Of course, it's not every day that Granny sends home the mother of all apple branches. The thing weighed more than Mom (and that's saying something!) Granny and Mom rather naively assumed that a snack of this stature would take Kenzie and me two, maybe three days to devour. HAH! We reduced that stick to the size of a toothpick in two hours flat. Nothing left but some sawdust...

Speaking of DUST, it's been a while since Mom dragged out the noisy sucky thing in a feeble attempt to make our surroundings more habitable. She's the most marginal of housekeepers on her best day, and   trust us, she doesn't have many of those. We are used to it by now, the billowing cloud of debris that surrounds us with every step. Far be it from Kenzie and me to complain about the noxious fumes that assault our senses daily. Sure, Mom can claim "asthma" when faced with the onerous ordeal of climbing, say, six steps. But let a couple of long-suffering house bunnies simply SUGGEST that a full scale overhaul of our living environment is in order, and we're treated with all the respect one might afford an annoying ant. Or an annoying AUNT.

So we soldier on, Kenzie and me, and bear our burdens bravely. Scrumptious snacks help take the sting out of our squalor. There's not much apple tree left, and Granny wants it all gone. She says maybe she should just set us to work on the stump, and save her hours of back-breaking labor. I'm all for it. We are more than up for the challenge. But not right now. Right now we've got full tummies and a cozy hideaway under the bed, and the rain is gently falling, and the furnace is percolating, and the only thing we're up for is a long nap.

*blush*

Mom has a new habit. She will pounce on me while I am peacefully snoozing, and bury her face in my fur, and mutter all kinds of nonsense like, "Oh, my widdle Freddie Weddie, my precious widdle lovie bunny!" and cover me with all kinds of syrupy kisses. It's embarrassing, I tell you. No dignity. Kenzie escapes most of the carnage because she stays safely under the bed, and Mom doesn't fit under there. But I prefer to relax in the open air, and that's when Mom pounces!

You may have been wondering where I've been for the last three or four, or five, months (flashes accusing glare at Mom). It's all her fault. She has been obsessed with her silly schoolwork and hasn't left me any computer time whatsoever. I have been stewing in my own creative juices since...well, my last blog entry was OCTOBER. So that will tell you something about Mom and her ability to SHARE the computer.

So between dodging Mom's attacks attention, and fighting with her for access to the keyboard, I haven't gotten a lot of writing done. She promises to make it up to me. So stay tuned, and if you can think of any helpful hints for me to make myself less irresistible (tough job, I know), pass them along. AACCKK!! Here she comes again.....!!

Old news

Would you believe Mom is still scolding me for my home improvements?? You would think she'd be grateful to have a hard-working house bunny with bunstruction skills. There's not a room in the house that's not been graced with my special artistic touches.

It's easier to get away with  engage in this behavior because Mom's shackled herself to the computer for what she describes as "mountains of homework". It's heavy duty homework too, the kind that causes her to utter the kind of language that sensitive house bunnies should not be subjected to. So instead of sticking around and being morally compromised, Kenzie and I headed out to see what kind of havoc we could wreak projects we could devote ourselves to.

It's Mom's own fault. Granny suggested the other day that we might be BORED. "Free reign of every room in the house, and the little $%#$s decide they need more EXCITEMENT in their lives???" Mom bellered, as we dove for cover. The cover we chose happened to be the living room sofa, and while we huddled under there, clinging to each other in fear and desperation, I noticed that the carpet seemed to be a little discolored (not that I had ANYTHING to do with THAT), and I gave it just the tiniest tug.

Well, you know that saying about potato chips, you can't ever only eat just one? It kind of works that way for carpeting too. And once I'd pulled up a cubic foot of the stuff over by the lamp, it seemed aesthetically pleasing to just keep going. By the time Mom dragged herself away from analyzing "The Merchant of Venice" as delineated in structuralism, or some such nonsense, we'd* cleared away the size of a small wading pool.

So today we are marooned under the bed while Mom mitigates the damage. She's going to measure for a throw rug, and perhaps some barbed wire.

*Kenzie insists she was not involved. She only acted as a lookout. You know what Judge Judy would say about THAT.

Pride and Productivity

It has come to my attention that my beloved human cousin Armando has been led to believe some spurious untruths about me and my equally beloved mate Kenzie. There is NOT poop "all over the house". We keep it to the bathroom, bedroom, and under the sofa. And I didn't "lay waste to the perfectly good living room carpet". I merely REARRANGED the tufts in a pleasant, bunny-friendly pattern. And despite what some might allege, I do NOT stick my nose in everything Mom eats and take a chunk for myself. Well, *I* do not. Kenzie, on the other hand...

I really can't blame the boy for thinking ill of us. Moth refuses to let us travel in the car unless it's a trip to the VET, and therefore we can't actually SEE Armando and solicit his sympathy. Mom says we can send him a note at Christmas, but you can't really lay out a case for yourself in a Hallmark card. Especially the cheap kind Mom buys with no blank space.

So I will go on being maligned, consoled only by my sea grass chewie and the fifty pound bag of seed Mom bought for the birds. At least she said it was for the birds, when she saw me gnawing a hole in the bottom of it. I say what's a little more debris on Mom's kitchen floor? It's not like we're living in the Barbie Dream House. Of course, I have proudly left my mark on Mom's ACTUAL Barbie house, but that's another story for another time.

Foiled again

Mom has left her bedroom closet door tightly closed for the past two weeks now. At first I was sure it was just an innocent mistake, and she would soon see the error of her ways. It's just not right for one of my favorite potty ahem, PLAY, spots to be consistently out of reach.

So imagine my delight when she went into the back bedroom to drag out a furnace filter (because somewhere or other she heard the absolutely unfounded assertion that furnace filters should be replaced on a regular basis, even though they are SO PRETTY covered with soft black and white fur) and anyway, she left the CLOSET OPEN!!! (This is the same closet in which I performed much destruction, ahem, CONSTRUCTION earlier in the season).

I waited until Mom was safely out of earshot and I dove headlong into the room, and barrelled straight into my favorite corner. But something was missing. Gone were my carpet tufts and strips of material carefully gleaned from the ancient comforter. Also missing was my impressive pile of foam bits, and a spare chunk of weatherstripping.

But what shocked me most of ALL was the absence of my carefully deposited mounds of poop, ahem, "personal territory markers". None were left. Not ONE. There's one on the front porch caught in the spider's web, for goodness sake! But none in my very own sacred sanctum!

Well, there was just one thing to be done about it, and I think we all know what that is. So I hoisted myself up by my bunstraps and set to work redecorating. Mom hasn't seen the fruits of my labor yet. She's been too busy patting herself on the back for her newly "fresh and airy" bedroom. At the glacial rate Mom cleans, my efforts should go undetected for at least six months. Or until it's time to change the furnace filter again.

Fearsome

Behold Fred the Fearless, Intrepid Explorer! Yesterday I conquered the kitchen, with its slippery tile floor and creaky cabinetry. I bravely went face to face with the air conditioning duct, and showed the boots in the coat closet who's boss! Mom found me lurking underneath the jelly cupboard, surveying my domain.

Today I vanquished the bathroom! First I scaled a mountain of cushy toilet paper, then slithered into the cabinet under the sink and rearranged the towels. And I got a good head start on a new bald spot on the carpet behind the totes.

Mom doesn't seem to appreciate my adventuresome nature. "NO, Freddie, don't rip the wallboard!" "Stop, Freddie, the shower stall is not a litter box!" She's so fussy.

Oh yeah,

it's my BIRTHDAY today!!! And Kenzie's too. I am nine, and she is six. And we STILL don't get to go in the closet...