You Are What You Eat – Healthy Food Choices Build Healthy Bodies
March 5, 2024
George Paul “Butch” Bergeron
March 5, 2024
Dear Easter Bunny: Easter in March! That’s kinda early!
Dear April: The sooner the better. The sooner it’s over, the sooner I get paid for answering these annoying human questions. As it is, your prompt wasn’t even a question, and so I’m literally not getting paid for suffering at you this moment. You should just save your non-questions for the next Jeopardy episode and continue your long streak as a loser.
Dear Easter Bunny: Why do rabbits live in burrows?
Dear Ponderer: Because it’s easier to catch crawfish there than where humans catch them.
Dear Easter Bunny: Is it true that messing with your sense of smell will keep you out of my garden? The Farmer’s Almanac says that to protect my vegetables I should plant marigold, onions, garlic, or lavender and to sprinkle talcum powder or red pepper powder.
Dear Whiffy: I welcome all these measures. I will use onions, garlic, and red pepper powder to season my next crawfish boil in your backyard to which you’re not invited. Marigolds contain carotenoid nutrients important for my health, especially when you selfishly don’t plant enough carrots for me. Lavender helps me sleep. And talcum powder helps relieve my occasional chafing. So, go ahead: Plant and powder to my heart’s content.
Dear Easter Bunny: I see people planting little mirrors in their gardens to ward you off. I’ve even seen little mirrors for sale at garden stores and plant nurseries. Are you greedy little soft-footed scavengers afraid of your own little reflections?
Dear Belittler: A rabbit has no reflection. If you were smart, you would protect your ugly, naked, exposed neck, especially in the darkness between sunset and sunrise.
Dear Easter Bunny: I hear that rabbits can see their environment for all 360 degrees around them. How is that possible?
Dear Disbeliever: Watch the “Exorcist” and then stay away from us.
Dear Easter Bunny: I have worn a rabbit’s foot since I’ve been a child, and I have never been harmed or suffered misfortune. Am I being superstitious?
Dear Stitious: My mother had four of those and they did not save her from the cold, moonlit night when the yelps of the predators echoed across the barren cane fields under the blood-red moon at the solstice. Perhaps you’re wearing one of hers right now. Nonetheless, thank you for resurrecting my painful bunnyhood trauma and long-repressed memories of abandonment.
Dear Easter Bunny: What’s on your playlist these days?
Dear Cottonmouth: “Grazing in the Grass” by the Friends of Distinction, “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane, and anything by Bad Bunny.
Dear Easter Bunny: You mean to tell me that “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” is not on your playlist?
Dear Cottonmouth: Rabbit tails are comprised of keratin, which is a protein, and not cotton, which is cellulose. I refuse to listen to songs based on such molecular inaccuracies.
Dear Easter Bunny: What movies are streaming in your burrow these days?
Dear Buff: I have on 24-hour repeat a 1972 movie called “Night of the Lepus.” It’s one of those great revenge movies like every cowboy western you’ve ever seen and all Rockys II through V. The plot involves giant, carnivorous rabbits that eat their way through small towns and townspeople somewhere in the southwest. “How many eyes does horror have?” inquires the deep-voiced movie poster, which hangs in the family dining shaft of my burrow. “Lepus” stars Janet Leigh (leading actress in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” and also mother of Jamie Lee Curtis), Deforest Kelley (who starred as “Bones” in the original “Star Trek” series), and a lot of ketchup. In the film, ketchup is smeared across the cheeks and whiskers of rabbits filmed close-up as well as across the mutilated bodies of formerly defiant townspeople strewn across the fields and roadsides. Human critics panned the movie due to poor production quality and a foolish premise. Rabbit critics think filming their actor brethren next to tiny human dolls is foolish human filmmaking, not to mention dressing human stunt actors in rabbit costumes for attack scenes. Humans say that Leigh and Kelley couldn’t find better jobs after their famous starring roles. Rabbits say that Leigh and Kelley were eager to work alongside renowned Hollywood animal trainer and veteran of Lassie films Lee Sollenberger, who for “Lepus,” was training intelligent mammals for the first time. By the way, “Lepus” is the genus name given by humans for the 29 species of rabbit they’ve discovered. Conversely, rabbits have also given names for humans they’ve discovered, but I shall refrain from sharing these in print.
Dear Easter Bunny: What do you mean when you say “yet more letters”?
Dear Miss d’Issue: Clearly you overlooked the April 2022 and April 2023 issues of this fine magazine. You can find back issues at the Library of Congress in D.C., Tiffany’s in New York City, the King’s Library in London, Shakespeare and Company in Paris, and finer bookshops in Albuquerque, provided that upon arrival you take a left turn when you emerge from your burrow.
