A modern neighborhood fable

Squirrel. Something like the ones at the beginning of this fable.

Two amorous gray squirrels lived behind an angry woman who considered them “vermin.”

No. She considered rabbits vermin. She didn’t speak ill of the squirrels at all. Instead she marveled at their ability to walk on the phone wire in the alley. She pretty much left the squirrels alone.

She would have left the rabbits alone too, except she found one hiding in her rose garden, right by the driveway where she was about to get into the car. The angry woman cursed the rabbit. “Get outta here, you asshole,” she said. The rabbit only crouched lower among the rose bushes.

Looking about her to see if any neighbors were outdoors and perhaps had heard her curses, she smiled cruelly.

No neighbors were outdoors, but a really old — more than 90 years — lady across the street had been peering through her front window. She was always doing that because she believed that her neighbors plotted against her. She just knew they stalked her.

When the old lady saw the angry woman with her cruel smile glaring at the rabbit she was frightened. The old lady couldn’t see the rabbit, of course. Nor could she hear the angry words. She could see only the woman with the cruel smile, so she telephoned the police.

The police were greatly amused, of course, when they heard about the old lady’s neighbor with a “cruel smile.” They even joked about it and told their families when they got home.

However, they had to investigate, so they took the allegation of stalking seriously and drove by the house where the rabbit had crouched in the rose bush garden.

By then the angry woman had driven off and the rabbit had hopped into someone else’s yard. The police promised to keep an eye on the house where the angry woman lived.

Moral: an aggressive attitude against a rabbit can have untoward consequences to the emotional well-being of an elderly neighbor.