Lucky, My Foot!

What is it with humans and "lucky" items, like rabbits' feet? Some items, like a four-leaf clover, can be had without the death of anything (the clover plant can go on living after the loss of the "lucky" item). But others, like a rabbit's foot, certainly entail the demise of the donor.

Is this a cruel variant of "one man's trash is another man's treasure"? You know, "your bad luck is my good luck"? Is that how you raise your children these days? It seems like a rather extreme finders keepers, losers weepers attitude (I'm sure Gene Bob will let me know if I'm missing any punctuation in that phrase).

Besides, other than "Elephant Stew" and a shrinking community of country folk, there doesn't appear to be much demand for any part of the rabbit but the hind feet. Pretty wasteful, don't you think?

Aside #Add 1 Rabbit: Surely you've all heard about the recipe for Elephant Stew? It serves about 100 people, but includes directions for how to extend the recipe to feed 200 people by adding one rabbit. Adding the rabbit does the trick because no one want to find a hare in their stew. Ha ha. ROTFLMFO!

Aside #2': ROTFLMFO is SMS for Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Foot Off. Maybe that explains the source of rabbits' feet.

I know, some of you are thinking of rabbit fur lined gloves. They used to be popular (except with the rabbits), but these days they're rather hard to find. Sadly, rabbit feet in all manner of unnatural colors aren't.

And it's not like you need to slaughter a bunch of rabbits anyway just to keep the population down. Only about 15% of wild rabbits survive more than a year! While humans are losing their taste for rabbit stew; coyotes, owls, hawks, bobcats, wolves, foxes, and domesticated cats and dogs, plus a bunch of other critters, are still quite fond of us.

And then there are Chevy Suburbans.

So please, if you won't pass up the "lucky" rabbit foot to save the life of a rabbit, how about doing so to keep a wild animal from starving? After all, a well fed coyote isn't likely to come after Fluffy, your cute little lap dog (or cat).

Mating Rituals

So far none of my helpful readers has been very helpful. The only response so far has been to correct my hyphenation.

Aside #1: Is Anal-Retentive hyphenated?

But I did spend some more time going through the google results and found another meaning for Prom — one which makes more sense for the popular kids — a dance.

Basically, the Prom is an elaborate mating ritual where the male spends a lot of money to win the affections of a female, with the production of offspring being the ultimate goal. This I can relate to as a rabbit.

What we cottontails do isn't all that different: first the male chases the female, usually after dark, until the female turns and faces him. The female then jabs at the male a bit with her forepaws and, eventually, one of the pair jumps about 2 feet into the air. At this point the chase may be on again and the cycle can continue for several iterations. Eventually, mating occurs and babies follow about 4 weeks later.

If we (rabbits) were to don clothes like the rabbit in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and rent a large automobile we could probably slip in unnoticed to the Prom.

Goin' to the Prom!

Lots of the older (human) kids around here are talking about going to something called The PROM. I know that curiosity is generally considered to be the domain of cats (and is rumored to be a risky business), but I was interested in finding out more about it. So, of course, I googled prom.

Apparently kids these days are really sophisticated from a high-tech point of view. In fact, they are really into tech and seem to organize big parties around it.

Aside #13-years-old-and-holding: A PROM party seems to be different from a LAN Party. While both involve computer technology, only unpopular males go to LAN Parties while the rest of the population (of a certain age) goes to PROM parties. There appears to be little interaction between the two groups.

And you can't just go to a PROM party, you have to get all dressed up and pay someone with a really nice car to drive you. I think there must be a lot of drinking going on and the hired car is sort of like a designated driver program, only your best friends get to party along with you.

Anyway, they spend so much time planning these PROM parties, and so much money attending them, that they can only afford to do one per year.

But I'm still confused by one thing, while all the talk is about going to the PROM party and what they'll wear and who they're going with and where they'll eat before hand, they never seem to talk about the programs. I'd think that the program in the PROM would be a key feature of a PROM party. Either they're writing programs to store in the PROM or they're running them (in some device), right? I mean, what else can you do with a Programmable Read Only Memory module? I saw a few pictures of PROMs on the web and they all look pretty much alike.

So a PROM party must be about the programs, but I can't find anything on Google about PROM programming in the context of a PROM party. Maybe one of my helpful readers will help me out.

Busy, Busy!

I feel a bit like the rabbit in "Alice in Wonderland": rushing about, constantly late. I've been rather busy since Easter and, thankfully, it has nothing to do with colored eggs. My research about Easter turned up the fact that Easter is a season, not just one day. Fortunately for me and for the poor schmucks who have to lay, decorate, and distribute them, that whole egg business is just one day.

Anyway, life is busy for a cottontail in spring. With plenty of food, relatively frequent rains (and automated sprinklers here in suburbia), and relatively cool weather it is prime time for us to do what we're famous for: breeding.

Did you know that we're only pregnant for about 4 weeks before we give birth to our babies? It's true. And we only take care of our babies for about 4 weeks before they're ready to hop off on their own. It's a good thing they're ready that fast because I can get pregnant again immediately after giving birth. Some of the rabbits around here, where food is plentiful, can have 7 litters of babies each year. Since each litter can have between 3 and 5 babies, that's as many as 35 cute, little bunnies every year from just one mature female.

Oh, a female is mature at the age of 2 to 3 months, so a female born in April can start having babies herself in July, and those babies could start having babies in October, though that is kind of late in the season.

But maybe now you have a better idea of why people talk about "reproducing like rabbits." They aren't talking about the photocopiers at Kinko's (though I've always liked that name)!

Oh, by the way, if you find some baby bunnies that you think have been abandoned, leave them alone. I only visit my babies at dawn and dusk, but never when I think people are around. Since they're born naked and blind they're kind of helpless and it's a good idea if I don't lead predators directly to them. So I tend to stay away except when it's time to feed them. That's just the way we cottontails do things and it seems to work.