For bunny time

Lawn Care Keeps Them Hopping

By Rick Horowitz

"I noticed you were struggling with your dandelions," said the kindly old woman next door. We were doing no such thing. What we were doing with our dandelions was ignoring them.

"You should get some of this," she said, showing us her very own bottle of "Kills 'Em Good," the champagne of weed assassins. "They have it down at the hardware store."

Just a little friendly advice, and why not? It's our first growing season in the new neighborhood; certainly we'd want to have a front lawn every bit as neat and clean as hers.

What we had at the moment was something different. What we had at the moment was Scotland.

It was, we kept telling ourselves as the days went by, "the natural look." (It sounded so much better than "Hell's Half Acre.") We had better things to do with our time and besides, who's to say what's right and wrong when it comes to plant life? If dandelions were a cash crop, we'd be in clover.

And there was the bunny. You couldn't decide this kind of thing without considering the bunny.

The bunny showed up in the backyard one afternoon with a baby bunny in tow. A day or two later, they were back again. A day or two after that, it was only mama, and it's been only mama ever since. She hops. She chews grass. She shows absolutely no fear of humans.

That's because she doesn't know about the kindly old woman's friendly son. The son has been stalking a certain squirrel who's been running noisily across their roof lately. He's tried bringing the squirrel down with his slingshot -- he shows us his slingshot -- but by the time he takes aim, the squirrel flattens himself against the roof: no target. "I may have to get my Magnum," he says. Then he says he's "joking." Then he smiles.

The other thing the kindly old woman's friendly son likes to do, when he's not stalking small neighborhood animals, is cook out on the backyard grill. All sorts of meat, it seems to us when the breeze is right; we've started to worry -- and keep track. We figure every afternoon's bunny drop-in means bunny wasn't last night's main course.

We may be getting too attached to her; we've never had a homing bunny before. But if we don't want the bunny slingshotted, Magnummed or barbecued, we also don't want her poisoned, and launching a ground war against the dandelions could be the last weed. On the other hand, the bunny seems to stick to the backyard; our dandelions are out front, where everyone can see them and think awful things about us.

(Not everyone, actually. "You never know in this neighborhood," says our native guide, "whether someone's going to lecture you about how terrible your lawn looks, or about poisoning the environment.")

Anyway: A good mowing and a laser-guided spraying, we're thinking, and we can keep the neighbors calm and the bunny safe.

But what if it's got nothing to do with weeds? What if it's a mother-and-son bunny-hunting ring? Maybe bunnies don't eat dandelions, but Mom makes us defoliate anyway so bunny has no place to hide, and then Sonny bags the bunny for dinner. Warning signs -- couldn't we put up warning signs? Bunnies can't read, but they're not stupid -- maybe a bunny face in a circle with a red slash through it. And then --

This is paranoia. She's only giving us good advice. He's only making conversation. The bunny can fend for herself.

So we mow. A neighbor walks by. "Peer pressure," he says. We spray. Another neighbor walks by. "That's quite a job you've got in front of you," she says.

And now -- why now? -- the bunny's started nibbling on the front lawn. Do we have a bunny with a death wish?

This will not be the end of it.

Rick Horowitz is a syndicated columnist, award-winning TV commentator and public speaker.