HARE BRAINED

 

I never believed in the Easter Bunny. The very idea seemed implausible at best to me. Even at the tender age of five I couldn’t ignore the fundamental disconnect between the egg and the rabbit.

Rabbits don't lay eggs. They don't even eat eggs. What eggo-centric lunatic dreamed up this harebrained mythology?  Rabbits are cute and soft, but they are not bright. They eat grass and they poop,  Bunnies are basically just tiny, long eared cows. With short legs.  And I think their contribution to the world's methane surplus has been sorely under rated. Did I mention they were not good at mathematics? 

Listen - if you put an egg in front of a rabbit, the rabbit with nudge it aside to get to the grass underneath, even if it is plastic grass. You could even write the rabbit’s name on the side of the egg, and the rabbit would still ignore it.

And yet every year we insist upon convincing our toddlers that for some reason a rabbit has chosen to hide vast numbers of eggs all over our back yards. Under bushes. Behind flower pots. In trees. What is wrong with us?! Rabbits can’t climb trees.

You might as well tell your children that elephants have been herding water buffalo in your flower bed, or that squirrels are using your attic to store up their winter supply of canned beets. Why do we insist upon telling our children this particular absurd story?

Where is this rabbit supposed to get all of these eggs? And from whom is he supposedly hiding them? From the chickens, perhaps - otherwise known as “the mothers”. If you think about it an Easter Egg Hunt is a mass kidnapping and we are encouraging our children to be accessories after the fact. The F.B.I. should be involved in this story line, or at least Farmer McGreggor.

The very idea is so silly that most of the eggs hidden today aren’t even real, They're plastic. And they are filled with chocolate and licorice and sweet tarts, and other things that rabbits don’t eat! Show me a rabbit that eats sweet tarts and I will show you a candidate for hossenfeffer..

Children eat those things. They aren't healthy for the children, but they eat them anyway. Just like they eat old gum, or crickets. Those aren't good for children either, but given half a chance , any toddler with happily stick a live cricket in their mouth. And a few teenagers, too.

And I understand that the Easter Egg hunt is for the children's entertainment. It’s just supposed to be fun. But couldn’t it be logical and fun at the same time? Couldn’t we have an Easter chicken hiding the eggs? Why does it have to be a bunny rabbit?! Maybe instead of hiding the eggs,  he could be the one looking for the eggs. Although, again, why, I have no idea. There seems to be a subtle hidden nastiness inside the Easter Rabbit,

The birth of the Easter bunny is about as murky as the reasoning behind him being a him. And yes, the gender-bender nomenclature claims Mr. Bunny is a male fertility symbol – known in any other context as a creepy old man.- or a creepy old rabbit.  

The description of male rabbits during their mating season is "Mad as a March Hare".  Because the reality is they will copulate with anything that even remotely resembles a female rabbit. Anything.

It was the immortal Bede, the 7^th century rumor trolling English monk,  who claimed the Jewish festival of Passover occurred during the month of “Eostre”, who was an ancient Gallic fertility goddess, which means she was a woman, which seems more sensible as far as fertility is concerned. And definitely less ominous than the image of a male heir to all that sexual energy.

In 1835 Jacob Grimm – the elder of the brothers of the same name – suggested there was “linguistic support” for a “Proto-Indo-European goddess named 'Ostera' who brought the dawn each morning. In reward for delivering this gift of life the sleepy Proto-Indo- European males threw things at her, eggs maybe, told her to come back in an hour and probably called her the “B” word. 

Wrote the grim Mr. Grimm about this heathen Easter “ ...there seem to have lingered among the people Easter-games so-called....I allude especially to the custom of Easter eggs...”. To which I am forced to reply, “What the hell does that mean? 

Are we talking some kind of Proto-Indo-European symbolic Ostera eggs or egg eggs? According to Grimm's theory the Easter Egg hunt is a sort of primitive endurance contest, involving stuffing your face with “pastry of heathenish form”, and/or a “Cool Hand Luke” egg eating contest, only now with psychedelic colors. So you can over think this thing any way you want, and it still makes no sense.

I know I’m overwrought over this. The Easter bunny is just another one of those little contradictions in logic accepted without question by most people, one of those silly little stripped gears in the workings of our cultural machinery, that don’t make any sense but seem to be required to hold our society together.  Like Daylight savings time. Or that bar on boy’s bicycles. Or Keanu Reeves’ movie career.

You could get excited about outrageous, silly things like the Easter Bunny  Or you can just ignore them, and pretend there is a logic to them, and live your life in some semblance of calm. But to do so would be a fraud and you know it!

The truth shall set you free. And the truth is the the spring Easter Bunny is a violently, sexual predator.  I don’t know who said the thing about truth and freedom, whoever said it would be so argumentative they will probably out live the rest of us.  We deserve to know why it is that an Easter Bunny would hide eggs. And if the answer isn’t good enough, we have a right to pick our own illogical anthropomorphic creature upon which to base our Easter fun.

In a nutshell - or an an egg shell -  Rabbits are an old German symbol of fertility, for obvious reasons. And the egg is a symbol of...I guess breakfast and birth  And if you put those two together, the Easter Egg Hunt becomes a rabbit symbolically hiding his fertility all over your back yard, where your children are encouraged to hunt until they find it.

Are we nuts?  When they are five or six years old we send them looking for the symbol of fertility in their own backyard.. When they are twelve we don't even want them to be taught about this in the public schools!  No wonder Americans are so screwed up. We get our childhood from a furry Casanova, and our adolescence from Queen Victoria.

Why do I feel so strongly about this? Because, oddly enough I once had a male rabbit actually find his fertility  in my back yard. All over my backyard. And the deposit he left behind did not smell like eggs -  at least not fresh eggs. And I ended up with about fifty million female rabbits in my backyard for the next twenty-four hours or so. My dog was too scared to go outside. And I certainly didn’t want any small children going out there, either, because I wasn’t sure I could explain what they would see. Or suffer. Not to mention their propensity for picking things up and putting it in their mouths. What an Easter that was.

But, getting back to the mythology - Why in God's name would you want your children to find the secret of fertility? And I think I have found the solution to that question. So you can have a grandchild, that’s why. Grandchildren are essential because they help you torture your adult children, thus completing one slice out of the circle of life pie chart.

It’s curious that the chickens, who actually lay the millions of eggs that are stashed under bushes and flowers and lawn chairs on Easter Sunday, are not considered symbols of fertility. The feminists’ version of this is that these chicks do all the work while some crowing cock gets all the credit.  Thank goodness feminism has been totally discredited. Still, those hard boiled chicks may have a point.  Scrambled, like everything else in our polyglot culture, but a point never-the-less. I just wish I knew what the hell it was.

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MAKING THE EASTER BUNNY MAKE SENSE.

I’m not sure I ever believed in the Easter Bunny. The very idea seemed implausible to me. Even at the tender age of five I couldn’t get over the fundamental conundrum of the egg. And the rabbit.

What the heck do rabbits have to do with eggs? They don’t lay eggs. They don’t even eat eggs. If you put an egg in front of a rabbit, the rabbit with nudge it aside to get to the grass underneath. You could even write the rabbit’s name on the side of the egg, and the rabbit will still ignore it.And yet we insist upon convincing our toddlers every year that for some reason a rabbit has chosen to hide vast numbers of eggs all over our back yards. Under bushes. Behind flower pots. In trees. What is wrong with us?! Rabbits can’t climb trees.You might as well tell your children that elephants have been herding water buffalo in your flower bed, or that squirrels are using your attic to store up their winter supply of canned beats. Why do we insist upon telling our children this particular absurd story? Where is this rabbit supposed to get all of these eggs? And from whom is he supposedly hiding them? From the chickens, perhaps - otherwise known as “the mothers”. If you think about it an Easter Egg Hunt is a mass kidnapping and we are encouraging our children to be accessories after the fact. The very idea is so silly that most of the eggs hidden today aren’t even real, they’re plastic. And they are filled with chocolate and licorice and sweet tarts and other things that rabbits don’t eat!Children eat those things. And I understand that the hunt is for their benefit. It’s just supposed to be fun. But couldn’t it be logical and fun at the same time? Couldn’t we have an Easter chicken hiding the eggs? Why does it have to be a rabbit?!I know I’m overwrought over this. The Easter bunny is just another one of those little contradictions accepted without question by most people, one of those silly little bumps in logic in our lives that don’t make any sense what-so-ever! Like Daylight savings time, or that bar on boy’s bicycles, or Keanu Reeves’ movie career.You could get excited about outrageous, silly things like that, or you can just ignore them, pretend there is a logic to them, and live your life in some semblance of calm. But to do so would be a fraud and you know it!The truth shall set you free. I don’t know who said that but whoever it was, they were right. We deserve to know why it is an Easter Bunny who hides eggs. And if the answer isn’t good enough, we have a right to pick our own anthropomorphic creature to create our Easter fun.Here’s all I could find out about the Easter Bunny; Rabbits are an old German symbol of fertility, for obvious reasons. And the egg is a symbol of breakfast and birth, I guess. And if you put those two together, the Easter Egg Hunt becomes a rabbit symbolically hiding the secret of his fertility all over your back yard, where you children can find it.Now, oddly enough I have had a male rabbit actually do that in my back yard. And what he did didn’t smell like eggs, at least not fresh eggs. I ended up with fifty million female rabbits in my backyard for the next twenty-four hours or so. My dog was too scared to go outside. And I certainly didn’t want any small children going out there, either, because I wasn’t sure I could explain what they would see. Not to mention their propensity for picking things up and putting it in their mouths. What an Easter that was.But, back to the ceremony; why would you want your children to find the secret of fertility? So you can have a grandchild, that’s why. Grandchildren are essential because they help you torture your adult children, thus completing part of the circle of life.It’s curious that the chickens, who actually lay the millions of eggs stashed under bushes and flowers and lawn chairs on Easter Sunday, are not considered symbols of fertility. The feminists’ version of this is that these chicks do all the work while some guy gets all the credit. Thank goodness feminism has been totally discredited. Still, those hard boiled chicks may have a point: scrambled, but a point.

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FOLLOW MY LOGIC

I’ll bet the cops knew what they would find when they spotted a subtly rocking car with steamed up windows parked on a side street in The Hague, Belgium. Simple logic told them that inside would be a naked man engaged in coitus with a naked woman. And indeed, that was what they found in the car: and if the man was 58 years old while the woman was just 19, that still did not seem to violate their expectations. There is no accounting for taste, as they say. And even when the 19 year old woman insisted that she was not a prostitute but a volunteer participant, the police officers might have been dubious but they could hardly have been flummoxed. However, when the man was asked to explain why he was engaged in the act of sex with a woman on a public street they were simply flabbergasted. The couple was, explained the man, engaged in trials of several erectile dysfunction pills. This was an original and perfectly logical explanation, which left the police discombobulated, flabbergasted, thunderstruck and bowled over. It would require hours of investigation to verify or disprove. So they simply arrested him for possession of the small amount of marijuana found in his car, and let it go at that.
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Logic is deceptively subjective and has not always been a favored tactic for problem solving. You can see its growing popularity in the September 1726 case of 25 year old Mary Toft. The married mother of three summoned Dr. John Howard, one of the new obstetricians, complaining of abdominal pains. And there, in the doctor’s presence, she gave “birth” to a dead, skinned rabbit. Over the next few days Mary “birthed” several more ex-bunnies. Dr. Howard’s enthusiastic reports drew the attention of the King’s own Doctor, Nathanael St. Andre. He claimed he could feel the “critters” jumping around in her womb, and did not seem bothered by not feeling the little cottontails being killed and skinned in there. All told Mary produced 17 “praeter-natural rabbits” – certainly an improvement on pulling one out of her hat – and for a couple of months she was the rage of official London. And then Sir Richard Manningham, a member of the Royal College of Physicans, suggested that science might benefit from an examination of Mary’s uterus, and Mary immediately confessed. Her husband had been supplying her with the rabbits, and whole thing had been a scam to make money. Mary spent four months in prison and Doctors Howard and St. Andre were forced to retire. A poem, entitled “The Doctor’s in Labor”, appeared: “Poor Mary Toft in ignorance was bred, and ne’er once betrayed a deep designing head, Ne’er seemed cut out for plots, yet never did wife, like her impose so grosely on man midwife. Who scorning Reason, Common Sense and nature, plac’ed all their faith in such a stupid creature.” A century later a book about Mary’s rabbit babies was a best seller, bound, of course, in rabbit skin. Logic had finally won the day…sort of. It would be two hundred years later when theatre historian and critic and early environmentalists Joseph Wood Krutch would observe that, “Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence.”
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In the small city of Hassleholm, Sweden, population of 48,000, logic has run up against gender bias. The city council wanted to know why all pedestrian crossing signs displayed a male figure, known in Sweden as “Mr. Walk Man”, so they designed their own female pedestrian signs, featuring “Fru Gaman”. But the Swedish National Roads Administration (the “Vagyerket”) rejected the new sign as confusing. The politically correct crowd in Hassleholm is now threatening to sue in defense of their logic over the logic of the Vagyerket. But clarity in signage is important, as any advertising copywriter can tell you. As an example there is the clear message in the new French ad campaign to increase student housing. Currently there are only 100,000 dormitory rooms nationwide available for the 200,000 French college students. The campaign was created and funded by the national student union, UNEF, and the poster shows a young couple having sex on a bed, sandwiched between desperately sleeping parents. The government praised the campaign as creative but promised to increase student housing only when the funds are available. And it is hard to argue with that logic, too. But if I am any judge of college students and the French, the French college students will find a reason to argue the point.
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See if you can follow the logic in this conundrum facing police in the Dominican Republic. Just after 5 am the police were called to an unnamed hotel in the resort city of Cabarete by staff. A guest, 33 year old Alan Reed, a citizen of Great Britain who was on the last night of a two week holiday, had been discovered by his fiancée, 21 year old Ellie Rothery, lying semiconscious on their bed, his shorts soaked in blood. At a private medical clinic doctors found some scratches on Alan’s back, two deep gashes across his penis and his left testicle had been almost completely removed. Mr. Reed told police “The whole thing is just one big blank”, but insisted he wasn’t drunk. Alan said the last thing he remembered was being alone in a restaurant, and then he had a cloudy memory of waking up on the beach. He had no idea of how he then journeyed the three miles back to his hotel.
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Ms. Rothery said the couple had been out the previous evening to a restaurant with a friend. After the meal she said she had accompanied the friend to a taxi stand and when she returned to their table Mr. Reed had disappeared. She searched for him in the town and on the beach for two hours before returning to their hotel room where she found him in their bed in a pool of blood. According to Inspector Contreras, of the National Police, although they are investigating this as an assault, it is an unusual event for the Dominican Republic. And because Alan still had his wallet, money and credit cards and enjoys diving and rock climbing (“Alan is very adventurous and sporty, more so than Ellie,” according to his intended mother-in-law), Inspector Contreras suggested that his injuries may have been caused by a fall on rocks or local coral outcrops. He then added that several suspects have already been arrested. I am open to suggestions on the logical explanation for this one.
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It seems logical that Patty Cooper, confined to a wheel chair for the last four years by brittle bone disorder, should seek the assistance of a service animal to help her, share her life and her two bedroom apartment. But it also seems logical that Patty’s landlord, the non-profit Central Vermont Community Land Trust, should refuse to allow Patty’s helper of choice, named Earl (short for “Early to Bed”), to share her apartment, because even though Earl is barely 32 inches tall and weighs only 100 pounds, Earl is a horse -a miniature “tobiano pinto” in fact - with a horse’s eating and toilet habits.
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The Trust says they would welcome service dogs and even service monkeys in their other units, but a service horse seems a little too much like a farm animal for an apartment complex. They are concerned about the volume of oats and hay a horse requires, and the likelihood the storage of such would attract vermin. And they remain dubious the horse can be “house trained”, and even if he is, does Patty have a “pooper scooper” big enough to clean up his outside poo? Patty contends that Earl can do things for her that a dog cannot, such as pull her wheel chair around town, and he’s been trained to ride on the bus. And horses live a lot longer than dogs. Patty argues that she and Earl have already made real sacrifices to fit into the human society. Earl has recently been gelded. Would the officials for the Community Land Trust do the same, or at least meet her halfway? Patty says, “I’m confident it’s all going to work out.”
*
Well, I’m not. This is actually the convergence of a perfect storm. Patty just bought the horse and the CVCLT just took over the apartment building, which is not to say the previous management company had agreed to accept Earl, but nobody seems interested in a compromise at the moment, which means that nobody is willing to see anyone else’s logic. And there is logic to that position, too. So Patty is suing. And, as we all know, a lawsuit is the pursuit of logic by other means.

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