bad omen

this bunny is very cute and alive

As I mentioned in on dedication I write all my posts out longhand on yellow junior legal note paper before I type them up in the evening.  Well, on Friday in the midst of a cold induced haze I left my irreplaceable note pad in my cubicle, thus my scheduled post will have to wait until Tuesday.  I did however have an odd experience that I felt I should share with you and perhaps someone can tell me if this is a bad omen.

Saturday afternoon while lounging around on the couch catching up on some Netflix documentaries (this included Exit through the gift shop, Black White and Gray, and Art and Copy) I noticed two cats stalking around my back yard.  A large white fluffy cat who tortures my own cats by simply being outside and infuriates Olive by being in her back yard.

I also noticed a new all black cat, it was slightly larger than the white cat and not fluffy, but muscular.  I watched them as they hung around the yard like a couple of bored gang members looking for some hapless individual to jump and steal their wallet.

They played around the creek for a while then basked in the sunlight on top of a brush pile.  I was surprised that to see that by 6:00 that evening they were still hanging around, as usually they wouldn’t hang out for more than an hour or two.

It was then that Jaime informed me of a hapless victim, a small baby bunny laying on it’s side in the grass.  I went outside to inspect and there it was, small helpless and definitely dead, though its exposed eye was closed and except for the frozen position of mid stride it could have been sleeping.

The two cats hovered about twenty feet away, casually watching as I inspected what I was beginning to assume was their kill.

Not having a shovel, and not wanting to dump the body in the creek, I decided to throw it in the garbage.  I went into the house and found a thick plastic bag and then marched back out into the yard.  I took a closer look at the corpse and noticed that its belly had been gashed and I could see gray colored intestines spilling out.

 The cats continued watched, their vicious little faces full of false innocence as I turned the bag inside out in my hand and slowly pulled the bunny into the bag.

The body was tiny but much heavier then I had anticipated.  Once it was all the way in I dashed out front to the trash can as fast as I could.  There was an irrational fear in my mind that at any moment the bunny would jump back to live and thrash about in the bag.

I dropped the bag in the trash, eulogized the bunny then walked away hoping that no one would need to fish anything out of the garbage and find the dead body.  On my way back in the house I wondered if it was a bad omen to find a dead bunny the day before Easter.

It can’t be a good omen and certainly for me there is a small amount of death surrounding Easter.  Dada died the day after Easter and ever since Jaime has worried that something bad will happen on or around that day.  Last year Olive took a spill off a park bench and landed on her head.  Even after the vet confirmed that she was fine Jaime continued to worry fueled by the fear that Easter was just two days away.

Personally I don’t believe in bad omens, and as someone who really doesn’t celebrate Easter beyond indulging in Peeps, jelly beans, and Cadbury Cream eggs, any meaning of the holiday is lost on me.  Certainly however finding a slain bunny in your back yard the day before Easter is not a sign of good luck.
posted by: brian snider