Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Rabid Rabbits

When I was in high school, I was put on a medication to help with stomach issues I was dealing with. The medicine did nothing for my health, but what it did do was to always give me night terrors involving rabbits. These nightmares began in pastels with beautiful scenery where the Easter Bunny would come up and offer me chocolates. When I would refuse them, the dreams would turn very dark and bad things would happen to me at the hands of the bunny. Very gory. Very unpleasant.

This began a terrible relationship I hold to this day with rabbits in general. I have an incurable fear of rabbits, and many of my friends know this about me.

I had a roommate once. Many of you will recognize him as the frontman of Laulu, Everett Laulunen. Everett had the bright idea one morning to wake me up from my slumber by taking a 4 foot tall cardboard cutout of an Easter Bunny, crouching beside my bed and saying in a creepy voice, "Benjamin! Wake up! I want to play with you today!"

I slowly opened my eyes, took one glance at the cardboard rabbit, and punched it square between the eyes. I was not a happy person that morning.

More recently, my wife and I took a late night walk near our apartment building. As we were walking along, a sliver of light from a nearby streetlamp fell on a furry lump on the edge of the sidewalk. Not seeing it for what it was, I came within inches of stepping on a dead rabbit with nothing more than sandals on my feet to protect me from whatever hell the dead animal would release upon me. I am unashamed to say that I screamed like a little girl having her tangled hair brushed fiercely with a fine-toothed comb. Our walk lasted less than a block from our front door before I retreated to the safety of my apartment.

As of late, the evils I have known for many years to exist within these seemingly harmless creatures has been noticed by another, much more powerful entity than myself. It is none other than Hollywood. As far back at 1975, with the release of Monte Python and the Holy Grail, we have been made privy to killer rabbits, but I have seen more and more movies being released with the same premise of rabbits.

Soon after I nearly marred my leg by stepping on the dead rabbit, Dana and I watched the new Lone Ranger movie with her mom. There is a scene with rabbits in it. I will try not to require a spoiler alert for this post, but by the end of the scene, my dear mother-in-law was beside herself with laughter because of the uncanny resemblance of my description of rabbits and the rabbits in said scene.

A similar experience happened when we watched Despicable Me 2 for Dana's birthday.

Soon, valued readers, you too will become wise to the true nature of these pesky demons who roam our streets, thinly veiling their attempts of destroying the human race behind fuzzy whiskers and twitchy noses. I just hope that by the time you do, it's not too late.