THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 21, 1996 TAG: 9606200171
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Over Easy
SOURCE: Jo-Ann Clegg
LENGTH: 85 lines
I was sitting in the family room reading the paper the other morning when I caught sight of something out of the corner of my eye that caused me to leap from my chair, race through the French doors and crash headlong down the back steps.
In the midst of the confusion that followed, I heard two distinct sounds.
One was a furious yelp, the other was a jet-propelled scurry.
The yelp came from Charlie, the irate Lhasa apso I had stepped on seconds before I went flying through the air. The scurry came from a long-eared, cotton-tailed critter with an Asiatic lily clamped in its jaws.
The Lhasa was mine. So was the lily.
So, apparently, was the critter who appeared to have been dispatched from some rent-a-rabbit agency to make sure that nothing I paid more than 59 cents a pot for was allowed to live in my back yard.
With the sickeningly cute rodent long gone I turned my attention to my bruised elbow and my furious fuzzball.
``Are you OK?'' I asked the snarling pile of honey-colored hair whose nap had just been so rudely interrupted.
``Yeah, if you overlook the fact that all my innards have been pushed to one side of my body and my left ear is where my right tonsil used to be,'' he growled.
``Well, then, you could at least ask how I am,'' I snapped back.
``Who cares, just so long as you can get my dinner for me tonight,'' he replied before closing his eyes again.
I pried his eyes open and stared into them.
``This,'' I told him, ``is all your fault.''
``It's all my fault that some lily lover with an appetite and an attitude decides to hang out in your precious garden?'' he asked with a snort.
``It may not be your fault that he makes the decision to hang out, but it is your fault that he decides to stay,'' I informed him.
``Since how?'' he asked.
``Since it's your job to protect the premises, and the last I knew those flowers were part of what is legally considered to be the premises,'' I told him.
``So get yourself a lawyer,'' he snarled, wresting his eyelids from my grip and going back to sleep.
``Useless animal,'' I muttered, nursing my elbow as I headed for the flower garden to check for damage.
``I heard that,'' he snapped.
I ignored him.
The damage was far worse than expected.
Of six pricey lily plants I had put in two years ago, only two had blooms. The two that had grown to a height of 5 feet and had all of the flowers at the very top.
The other four had stripped stems and the kind of needle-like marks made by very small, very sharp teeth.
The day lilies, bought outside the grocery store for $1.99 per hundred blooms, and now grown to approximately 10 times their original size, were thriving.
Rabbits, I have learned through the years, have expensive tastes.
One summer I put in a flat of clearance sale patio tomatoes. The rabbits never touched them. The next summer I upgraded to the latest in designer tomatoes. I fought three rabbits to the ground to save a single 2-inch round green one.
Back behind the bushes I discovered a female with a stalk of tomato blossoms trailing seductively from her mouth. She looked me in the eye and winked. ``The better to attract the guys with,'' she seemed to be saying in her disgustingly adorable way.
``Yeah, right,'' I yelled at her, ``so you can set up housekeeping, produce more rabbits so they can eat more plants so I can waste more time and money.''
``Who on earth are you talking to?'' Bill called from the deck.
``A well fed, incredibly promiscuous intruder,'' I muttered, ``one that your dog should be protecting our garden from.''
``Protecting gardens is not spelled out in my job description,'' Charlie had informed me that morning.
He repeated that statement the other day as I surveyed the latest damage and nursed my aching elbow.
``And neither, I might add, is licking your wounds,'' he proclaimed. ``That, you'll have to take care of yourself.''
Then he dropped off into a deep sleep during which muffled barks issued from his throat and his feet made rapid running motions.
``If you can chase rabbits in your sleep, why can't you do it when you're awake?'' I yelled.
It was no use. His eyes stayed firmly closed as a pair of newcomers snuck under the fence and began nibbling their way down my row of expensive hybrid impatiens. by CNB