Perpetual State of Flux

Foster’s post in the Village Voice today, reminds me of a incident that happened back when we were still living in Minneapolis.

I was walking my dog one spring afternoon when I heard a neighbor abruptly yank open a window from the second story of his home.  Suddenly, a rifle of some sort appeared and I watched as he quickly fired off a shot in the direction of his vegetable garden. The shot was followed by the most horrid high pitched screech and a flash of light brown and bright red blazed past us. Both my dog and I sat there absolutely stunned as I realized our local Farmer McGregor had just shot Peter Rabbit. 

I was absolutely incensed.  A trail of fresh blood stretched before my feet and my mind quickly raced through my options.  I wanted to scream up at the window but frankly I was more than a little bit fearful of my neighbor who had just pointed some sort of gun, albeit a BB gun, out the window of his Dutch Colonial.  

I realized I could call the cops - there had to be some sort of city ordinance against firing a BB gun within city limits - but outside of the firing of the BB gun, I had to admit that it felt more than a little stupid to involve the cops in a possible bunny homicide. AND truth be told, I had no evidence of the rabbit’s death, all I could show was a bit of blood which proved little more than that the rabbit had been maimed.  I had just finished a stint working in criminal courts.  I knew a lot of the local police personally and I had a pretty good idea of the type of reaction I was going to get when I called to report a bunny maiming. 

In the end, I took a cowardly approach and decided not to do anything.  Mostly, my wild imagination got the best of me.  I knew that he saw me standing there that afternoon and though it seems silly to admit, I was absolutely terrified that he would retaliate by shooting my dog. 

Later that same evening, I told Ted about what I’d witnessed.  His anger and expressed desired response was met with my cowardly pleas that we just leave it alone.  

The next morning, on my way out of the house I discovered that a some point during the night, the words “BUNNY KILLER” were scrawled with enormous lettering in sidewalk chalk directly in front of the neighbor’s home.  

And just like that, the random appearance of sidewalk chalk in our front hallway that morning didn’t seem quite so random anymore.