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Rabbit

The Welder and I are driving over to another part of the facility where we'll talk with a graphic designer about these posters for the poster session. The Welder is driving since he knows where we're going. He has many odd things in his car.

I reach up and poke an oblong furry object that hangs alongside a cardboard air-freshener from his rearview mirror. "What's this? A tribble?"

"What's a tribble?"

"Don't you know? From Star Trek? 'The Trouble with Tribbles'." I'm finding that in any area where this young man isn't tremendously knowledgeable, he's stone ignorant.

"Oh, you'd watch Star Trek. That figures," he groans.

"Hey, I'm not nearly as geeky as this guy I went to college with. His mom made him a tribble that he used to carry around on his shoulder," I say.

The Welder emits suppressed gurgling noises. To distract him from the retching induced by having to share space with someone of my (and my friend's) geekitude, I prod the gray furry thing again and ask, "So what is it then?"

"It's a rabbit."

"A rabbit? Where are its ears?"

"It used to have those, but they're gone," he says.

"Okay, so it's a stripped rabbit corpse." I twist it around on its leather cord and see the bare spots where ears may have once been attached.

"Yeah. It has herbs in it."

I pounce. "Herbs? You mean it's a hippie rabbit?"

He goes on the defensive. "No! Not a hippie rabbit. My girlfriend made it. It's got herbs and runes. Nordic runes in it. She sliced tree branches and wrote Nordic runes on the slices and put those in there too."

"Ooh-hoo! It's a hippie Pagan rabbit!"

"Uh, yeah. A Pagan rabbit." He seems to like that better. "Runes and herbs, she put different herbs in there and I think there was a painted rock too."

"Ha! A hippie Pagan rabbit air-freshener totem!" I crow.

"A Pagan rabbit," he corrects me. "But I'm thinking I might take it down. See? When I turn right it really blocks my line of sight."

"Maybe it's telling you you're going in the wrong direction," I say.

"Or maybe it's telling me I should take turns faster so it'll swing out of the way," he says, demonstrating.

382 words | July 26, 2004 08:03 PM | Rocket science