Somebunny has a warped sense of humour

This morning, while wandering outside and having my first cuppa java, I spotted a rabbit rushing across the field beyond the property boundary. I found myself willing it to turn back and not find a way through the fence, as on this side there are two giant dogs and a pretty agro little one.  It came through anyway, but managed to cross the acres unmolested, so I guess it had lucky rabbit feet!

It got me to thinking about bunnies in general… How one boiled bunny spread fear and horror through the male population in the late 80′s. How we think they are cute and cuddly (the Japanese think so anyway), but really they can be twitchy and snappy. And in some people they trigger strange behaviour.

Friends of mine in America were bunny people. They had a pair who predictably copulated like..well, er…rabbits. They unpredictably only produced two babies in the litter. One was given to an enthusiastic home and the other was kept by the family. For no reason that anyone could fathom, this particular bunny was in the incarnation of Bunnicular. Unlike its parents, it hated people and benevolent actions like the arrival of food were greeted with attacks. Nips are okay…biting an adult thumb down to the bone is just scary.

I decided that my kids with their little fingers were no longer available for bunny sitting when the family went away. One adult thumb to the bone = one child finger severed.

After much soul-searching, the family decided that the bunny was too much of a liability.Visions of lawsuits danced in their heads…no sugar plums in sight. The problem was letting go… Despite its tendency to amputate fingers, the bunny had a beautiful coat, it was the much anticipated child to their two cuddly bunnies – somehow just ending was not going to do. The thought that perhaps keeping the pelt would be okay crossed someone’s mind… But that someone had laryngitis… so that someone came to me and asked me to call the taxidermist to find out how much it would cost to skin a rabbit…

The phone call was somewhat like being plunged into the heart of Deliverance. The creature on the other end assured me it would be his pleasure to take the pelt off the rabbit. He somewhat ghoulishly suggested that he would throw in the euthanasia for free… having been somewhat perturbed when I explained that it would be delivered to him fresh from the needle at the vet’s office. I was suddenly very glad that my friend had laryngitus, that she could not deal with this hick from the backwoods of the Appalachians. I had hideous visions of pet turned pot roast (which was why he probably wanted it sans the drugs). Seems Alan Alda was right - Never have your dog stuffed.

I am not a sales person – but I believe I reached previously unknown heights of persuasion after I terminated that call.   So bunny came back from the vet and because it was no longer going to the skinning scary guy, there was state of limbo. So bunny was carefully wrapped in a towel and several plastic bags and given a freezer shelf to itself…

It became a little too much for my bizarre sense of humour. The giggles always threatened to erupt every time an item from the freezer was offered. Ice cream? As long as it’s not Bunnilla flavour!

Eventually it was decided that the frozen fuzzball would be given a proper burial in the back yard – unfortunately winter had set in and the ground was as hard as a rock. Eventually the bunny left the freezer in the spring time and was laid to rest with due care, attention and ceremony.

RIP Bunnicular – I hope there are hosts of heavenly thumbs to hew in the hereafter… In retrospect – I think you were put on this planet as retribution for all the people who own “lucky” rabbits’ feet. You just never got a chance to complete your rabbity revenge!

We have a host of bunny vinyls available for Easter decorations. Email us at sales(at)themoon(dot)co(dot)za

Trees!

Holiday gift cards - for clients who don't do snow images for a summer Christmas. environmentally friendly too - no ink, and earning treebucks.

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago – the next best time is now”

I love trees. Hang on, let me qualify that – I love most trees. I hated the ancient apple tree in my garden in America that produced a million wormy sour apples every year. The apples fell to the ground and attracted two million wasps – that tree I mentally consigned to tree hell. Oh yeah, I hate eucalyptus and black wattle trees that some idiot introduced to South Africa eons ago. Now they thrive and suck much needed water from the ground and crowd out indigenous species. Those trees need to emigrate back to Australia!

I love indigenous trees. They have such wonderfully evocative names: Tamboti,  Baobab, Jackalberry, Umbrella Thorn, Bushwillow, Buffalothorn, Mopani, Paperbark, Fevertree, Sausagetree,  Stinkwood, Sneezewood, Yellowwood – beautiful trees in a beautiful country.

I love climbing trees. I spent quite a lot of my childhood in trees and wish my kids had a tree to climb and build a treehouse in. I Want a grown up treehouse one day – yes, they do exist – I have the book! I have been known to totally embarrass my children by shinning up a suitable tree to look at the world from a different view-point.

I like tree people too! At the Yebo Gogga event last year, we met Sean Hide of Grow-A-Tree fame. We already owned a Grow-A-Tree White Stinkwood which had already reached a nice height of 30cm (from seed). On meeting Sean, my daughter, the family tree-embracer and inspiration behind out treebucks programme indulged in a Wild Olive tree pack . Sean is a dynamic guy -  and I suspect if we had lingered for any length of time at his stand, I would have taken home a small forest in seed form. I think it’s the best gift for someone who loves growing stuff.

If you would prefer the idea of a bigger tree with a more immediate effect on the environment, instead of the long haul of waiting for your baby to grown from seed, then Food and Trees for Africa are the people to contact. In addition to planting trees to offset carbon emissions, they also run  programmes that educate communities about sustainable food gardening.

We will be contacting them today with our latest order! We are happy to report that 10 trees will be taking root on behalf of clients who earned enough treebucks recently.

Treebucks? Treebucks are virtual points we award to clients who order printed goods through our company. We love design and marketing, but the worst part about it is thinking of all that paper being used. After working out how many square metres of paper would be equivalent to a tree, we award clients treebucks based on the square-meterage of their print order. When they have enough bucks – we buy a tree from Food and Trees for Africa on their behalf.

We have a few clients teetering on the brink of being tree “owners”, and some who are about to be responsible for mini plantations. We are grateful for all of their orders and although they might never actually sit under the tree they are responsible for, they can enjoy the virtual benediction of the shade and wealth they have provided for countless others.

Have you planted/hugged/consigned to hell/deported/climbed a tree today?

Going nuts!

The squirrels are looking for me, they think I'm nuts!

Allergies are irritating. One of the worst aspects of having a child with food allergies is realising that the shiny immortality bubble that most kids carry around like a second skin isn’t present in the allergic child. They learn to worry about anaphylaxis and death, they have to carry around anti-histamines and ephedrine injectors, they learn to ask, and as soon as they can read, they read ingredient labels.

As a parent, you can hover and bite your nails, if that makes you happy. But it is more than likely going to send you to the nut-house.  Demanding a nut/wheat/dairy/egg/soy free environment is a road to insanity as well. In America, the K-3 school my children attended  had a partially nut-free policy. All common areas like the art class, media centre and library were totally nut-free zones. The rest of the school was okay except for the classrooms of the children with allergies. In those rooms, the kids who had peanut/nut products in their lunches could not open their lunch boxes in the classroom. All children ate at tables set out in the gym and the allergic kids had a special table apart from the rest of the school.

I know this smacks of segregation, but this issue is fraught with all kinds of emotional reactions, usually from parents: the parents who want their kids to be able to eat peanut butter vs. the parents who are terrified their child will die from the allergy. It has all the makings of an ugly scene or two.

In my opinion, the only solution is education and hard work. The separate table and nut-free zones may seem like hard work, but once the work is done, they are constant reminders to the teachers and students that there are seemingly innocuous things in this world that can be deadly to other people. It is kinetic education on a daily basis. Educate the allergic child to read labels, ask questions and if in doubt – Don’t. Educate the teachers on allergies and when to administer ephedrine. Educate the classmates about allergies and how to avoid killing their friends. Educate yourself so that you plan ahead and actually prepare food from scratch with ingredients you trust.

Part of the hard work for me is getting a nut-free policy of sorts started at the school my children attend in South Africa. Cases of severe nut allergies are increasing in South Africa, of course not in the numbers seen elsewhere, as our population is smaller and in most cases, quite poor, and as reported in the Sunday Times on October 25th this year, allergies seem to be more prevalent in the affluent.

The school advertised as a nut-free school, but they are dancing to a different tune now. There has been a change in tuck-shop management and the people who now run it are clearly woefully ignorant of food allergy issues. They stocked all kinds of peanut laden chocolate bars and when asked to cater for a school function in winter, very cleverly garnished a cauldron full of butternut soup with nuts! Bearing in mind this was a mass catering event, how long do your think the “pretty” addition on the top lasted? Of course it was the soup that my child preferred and of course the server had no idea what the ingredients were. It is only the chance passing of one of the geniuses behind the garnish idea who heard my nut questions that saved us from some very unpleasant consequences.

The furious email that was delivered to all senior management in boxes, probably did more harm than good. I wouldn’t really know, as most of them did not bother to reply and when they did it was with an answer that a politician would be proud of!

I have now made myself super popular by sending yet another round of emails after some nut tartlets were served at yet another school event. Caterers are denying all knowledge of the items, but unless I was hallucinating, they existed and emerged from the catering hatch, so someone is being economical with the truth.

Eventually in an attempt to get some sort of workable policy in place, I made an appointment with the headmaster of the Preparatory School and presented him with a written out plan that could potentially work and not step on the toes of the kids who like peanut butter. I offered my services as an allergy coordinator/implementor of plan and presenter of allergy information to all parents.

As a peace-offering, I created the mug pictured above. I had thought it out and sketched the squirrels after the first nutty email, and did the final finishing in Photoshop before the meeting. My reasoning being that you get further with a smile than you do with a frown.  Wish I had thought of this before I sent those emails. I wish I had known about Nick Morgan’s blog posts on body language so I could have gauged whether the principal was open or closed to my ideas.

The mug is now sitting on the secretary’s desk (note to Headmaster – my spies are everywhere!) which may or may not be a sign that they are receptive to change. There was a lot of humming, haa-ing, ifs, ands, and buts thrown around at the meeting. I hope they are prepared to do some work on this, if not they are going to be driven nuts by me and the squirrels might find them.