5.03.2010

Broad enough Strokes

My box spring and mattress sat on the floor of my bedroom for so long that the thought of putting them back on a bed frame seemed absurdly foreign. A recent moving job I completed in the city left me in possession of a like-new plastic bed frame that snaps together and sits much more sturdily than the cheap metal affair I had before which I always feared would give way at a most inopportune time. As a result my bed is now a good two feet higher. If it had four posts around it and some form of flowing fabric veil it'd closely resemble something from the chamber of a pre-pubescent princess; but here, in this dimly lit room lined with bookshelves and firearms, it's just another awkwardly high mattress.

Its new altitude has taken some getting used to, and not all of us have adjusted. Tonight, in the thousandth vain attempt to receive affection from my rabbit, I learned this the hard way. She'd been fascinated by the recent addition of the pseudo-subterranean realm created by the bed's sudden elevation. I chased her out of her favorite new hiding spot, captured her in the laundry hamper, and dumped her onto the bed in hopes of being able to pet her for a minute. In utter defiance typical of the ironically antisocial bunny she leapt from the edge of the bed and landed hard on the hardwood floor. She looked like a painfully compressed accordion upon impact. A jump that used to be so easy for her had changed its nature entirely with the introduction of that pesky frame. In sheer shock she turned around, slightly bow-legged in the hind quarters, and jerked her head backwards as her tongue licked the whiskers on her right cheek. A sporadic twitch attacked her neck that brought my hands to my mouth in horror. This is it, I thought. She's broken her spine. Her ears flicked to the side a few times and she chewed at the air in a punch-drunk stupor. Finally, to my relief, she hopped back under the bed to recover her senses and lick her invisible wounds. Animals too make stupid faces and odd gestures when slightly injured and severely dazed. The chuckle came late, but definitively. I was saved from a manslaughter rap.

And in the end, as always, I'm grateful for the fable: rabbits, like people, should look before they leap.

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