Spring Training... for Bunnies

In spring, all thoughts turn to spring training for the bunnies.  After a long hard winter, they're ready to start Bunny Boot Camp at a remote site hidden beneath blankets of flowers.

It is there that the bunnies decide which career options to pursue.  Their choices are many, and bunnies must choose carefully.  Many of celebrity rabbits, like Bugs or Thumper, require the bunnies to work an internship program where they are generally mistreated and overworked for little compensation, all for the lure of fame.

The literary rabbits keep to themselves, and foster only the finest rabbit minds.  Each mentors one of the new rabbits.  Peter Cottontail, for example, looks for a somewhat rebellious type.

The Velveteen Rabbit is always scouting for new bunnies filled with love.

The March Hare is, not surprisingly, always in a hurry and tends to make snap judgments, which has led to disaster on more than one occasion.

Rabbit of the Hundred Acre Woods is always too nervous to make a thoughtful decision, and accepts hordes of hares.

Then there are the bunnies better known for their physical attributes.  The Energizer Bunny commands a vast squadron of rabbits, and they can be seen from the crack of dawn, until late at night, doing cardio and weights.

There are assorted Trickster Bunny Mentors... everyone from Anasazi...

...to the Trix Rabbit.

They're on the lookout for a particular kind of rabbit.  It's not the breed, they explain.  It's how the harebrain works.

Then there are imaginary rabbits, like Harvey, who train with their imagination.  Their graduating classes lack a certain visibility.

There are, of course, many specialty rabbits needed.  Peter Cottontail is always in need of new recruits, and is thankful that rabbits breed like rabbits, because it takes a lot of hopping to deliver all those eggs.

Little Bunny Foo Foo used to recruit at spring training...

...until his fairy godmother turned him into a ghoul.

(They always said he was mad as a March hare.)

Magician's rabbits are considered a specialty, and they attend secret seminars.

And of course many train to be garden variety rabbits, which are known at training camp as garden-eating variety rabbits.

But by the time spring is sprung, they're ready to hop to it.

It's a busy season, and the coaches have no time to pull rabbits out of their hats (or to split hares).

On the final day, after culmination exercises, everyone makes quick like a bunny...

...to embark on new careers.

If you hop to it, you can catch them hare...er, here.

Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican Jee

The Pelican Chorus

by Edward Lear

King and Queen of the Pelicans we;
No other Birds so grand we see!
None but we have feet like fins!
With lovely leathery throats and chins!
    Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican jee!
    We think no Birds so happy as we!
    Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican jill!
    We think so then, and we thought so still!

We live on the Nile. The Nile we love.
By night we sleep on the cliffs above;
By day we fish, and at eve we stand
On long bare islands of yellow sand.
And when the sun sinks slowly down
And the great rock walls grow dark and brown,
Where the purple river rolls fast and dim
And the Ivory Ibis starlike skim,
Wing to wing we dance around,—
Stamping our feet with a flumpy sound,—
Opening our mouths as Pelicans ought,
And this is the song we nighly snort;—
    Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican jee!
    We think no Birds so happy as we!
    Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican jill!
    We think so then, and we thought so still!

 

Last year came out our daughter, Dell;
And all the Birds received her well.
To do her honour, a feast we made
For every bird that can swim or wade.
Herons and Gulls, and Cormorants black,
Cranes, and flamingoes with scarlet back,
Plovers and Storks, and Geese in clouds,
Swans and Dilberry Ducks in crowds.
Thousands of Birds in wondrous flight!
They ate and drank and danced all night,
And echoing back from the rocks you heard
Multitude-echoes from Bird to bird,—
    Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican jee!
    We think no Birds so happy as we!
    Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican jill!
    We think so then, and we thought so still!

 

Yes, they came; and among the rest,
The King of the Cranes all grandly dressed.
Such a lovely tail! Its feathers float
between the ends of his blue dress-coat;
With pea-green trowsers all so neat,
And a delicate frill to hide his feet,—
(For though no one speaks of it, every one knows,
He has got no webs between his toes!)

As soon as he saw our Daughter Dell,
In violent love that Crane King fell,—
On seeing her waddling form so fair,
With a wreath of shrimps in her short white hair.
And before the end of the next long day,
Our Dell had given her heart away;
For the King of the Cranes had won that heart,
With a Crocodile’s egg and a large fish-tart.
She vowed to marry the King of the Cranes,
Leaving the Nile for stranges plains;
And away they flew in a gathering crowd
Of endless birds in a lengthening cloud.
    Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican jee!
    We think no Birds so happy as we!
    Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican jill!
    We think so then, and we thought so still!

And far away in the twilight sky,
We heard them singing a lessening cry,—
Farther and farther till out of sight,
And we stood alone in thesilent night!
Often since, in the nights of June,
We sit on the sand and watch the moon;—
She has gone to the great Gromboolian plain,
And we probably never shall meet again!
Oft, in the long still nights of June,
We sit on the rocks and watch the moon;—
——She dwells by the streams of the Chankly Bore,
And we probably never shall see her more.
    Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican jee!
    We think no Birds so happy as we!
    Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican jill!
    We think so then, and we thought so still!

Get charmed here. 

Buffalo Dusk

Buffalo Dusk

by Carl Sandburg



The buffaloes are gone.



And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.

And those who saw buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their great hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a pageant of dusk,

 

Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.



And the buffaloes are gone.  

 


Buffalo charms can be found here.