![wild rumpus wild rumpus](https://www.minnemamaadventures.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/rumpus5.jpg)
For years, I assumed the “deer” was just a funny name. When I was a kid, my dad served me deer chili. I’ve called it “rabbit stew.” They chewed the meat, but I’m not sure they understood. Twenty-something years of slamming into rabbits while driving down the Florida highways at night, watching them twitch in the grass at a state park, their long, yellowed teeth unpeeling when they yawn, finding their stretched bodies dead in the sand of a baseball field, chopping their skinned bodies into quarters, roasting them, and stirring them into stew. It looks comfortable there, and safe, but I’ve lived twenty-something years longer than my daughters. Bugs Bunny or the soft bunny Alice follows into Wonderland. To them, rabbits are still silly, magical creatures. When we arrive home, Lise piles her stuffed animals into a hill in the middle of her bedroom carpet. The cave itself can be wider, a small house, but still tight enough to touch your sides when you sleep. The tunnel should be as thin as possible, just enough space for your body to travel down.
Wild rumpus Patch#
The patch must be mostly bald too many plants will reach deep, stubborn roots, like a web to dig through. “Burrows?” she asks, and I explain: Find a patch of dirt, hard and cool and near a tree to throw shade over your home. I tell her they’re real and everywhere, but, “Maybe they’re asleep in their burrows.” Lise asks me if there are even any rabbits in real life, at all. I tell my five-year-old daughter, Lise, to look for them while we walk, but we see only bugs and plants and the wide, bright sky. There must be rabbits here, and they must be hiding between blades of grass. My daughters and I walk home from the park, crows warbling, bugs zipping, men spitting where they lay cement.