stephaniehaywood.com

A half hour later we returned to the same spot where the bunny was last seen. Sure enough, he was in the woods attempting to eat a log. I was sure that someone had dropped him off and left him there, thinking that the Elizabeth Park would be a safe place for a bunny to live. Noel went and put up his camera equipment and I ducked into the woods*.

*The woods at Elizabeth Park are not large, rather they are patches of trees with a log of twigs coming out every which way.

As soon as I made my way to the bunny, he would hop off to the more “brushy” area of the woods. I began to think we would never catch the bunny. Noel was on the outside of the woods and I was on the inside battling the twigs. We decided that I would chase the bunny out and Noel would catch it from the outside. This plan was attempted many times, and failed miserably every time. We had under-estimated the agility of a gray lop-eared bunny. After about a half hour of so Noel asked me an interesting question: “Do you want me to get the net?” I was a little confused. “The Net?” I asked him. He then preceded to tell me that we could use the net-thing in his trunk (I don’t know what it is called, but it is used to hold things steady in your trunk, a black net). Noel ran to the car while I continued to chase the bunny. I finally chased him out of the woods and he was sitting in the clearing between the woods I was currently in, and another patch of woods right across the path. Noel was sneaking up along side the path, net in hand. I made my way out of the woods just in time to see Noel run off so fast in hot pursuit of the bunny. I couldn’t see what was happening until I heard: “I got him!!!” I ran into the woods to see Noel trying to contain this angry, jumping, squirming, clawing, and grunting bunny. This was NOT a happy animal.

Ten scratches later we had him in the car. He was on the floor of Noel’s car, under me in the passenger seat, where I was holding him by the gruff of his neck. He was not happy. Every time the car would stop, slow down, or speed up, the bunny would flip upside-down, twist around, and grunt loudly. I would grab him and hold on tight, get scratched, and eventually get him back into the position where he would settle down for a moment. If Noel’s house was any further from Elizabeth Park we might not have made it home without being eaten by the bunny just like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Noel zipped up into the driveway and I quickly opened the door and ran out with the bunny flailing in my arms.

We had planned to take him into the backyard of Noel’s house. I must divert the story to tell why we chose this location. Noel’s little brother, Lee, owns a bunny. The bunny’s cage is located outside under the patio, where the bunny is kept dry and warm. Also in the backyard is a “bunny yard”, which is actually a toddler gate. It is tall and wide, allowing a big run space for Lee’s bunny to run around during the day. The bunny has to be contained in the “bunny yard” because Noel also has two dogs, a golden retriever and a little mutt, which will chase any bunnies that come into their backyard.

So today, of all days, everything that could make it hard for us to simply “drop” the bunny into the “bunny yard” went wrong. I run out the car with the jumping bunny and Noel opens the gate. I am at the gate just in time to hear Noel yell out: “Oh Crap!”. I make my way into the backyard almost dropping the bunny to see Noel run and hurdle over the bunny fence. What happens next was an image straight out of a movie. Noel is in the center of the bunny yard and Lee’s bunny (who has just been traumatized by someone flying through the air and landing in her yard) is running about 50mph circles around Noel, who is reaching out trying to grab this scared bunny. In the meantime Noel’s dogs are outside, looking at us curiously and also looking at both bunnies. I reach down with my free hand and grab her collar as Noel is still trying to get hold of this bunny who is still running laps around him. Finally Noel manages to pick up the bunny who makes it unharmed back into his cage, and I get to place the now raging-mad bunny into the cage. The dogs just looked at us, probably wondering what all the commotion was about.

We got cleaned up and calmed down, and began to ponder our options about the bunny. The first thing that needed to be done was that the bunny needed a temporary name. I named the bunny Smokey, as he is all gray. Since it is a rather large bunny, it is now temporarily a “he”. My mom suggested I check the paper, because she is sure that a bunny that pretty is someone’s pet who ran away. Noel and I have ruled out this option because of the fact that in order to get to Elizabeth Park, the bunny would have had to cross at least one major road, plus a bridge over a river. That is one smart bunny. I, personally, think that someone dropped off the bunny because they didn’t want him anymore. I did check the lost and found ads to make sure. Noel I have decided to either take him to a bunny farm, a vet maybe, or we are going to set him out at our garage sale, which is going on Saturday. Smokey is adorable, and is a very very nice and calm bunny. That is how we knew he was not a “wild bunny” for sure, was when we picked him up around him underside and he calmed down immediately, which is something that domestic bunnies do.

We knew the foosball table wouldn’t fit through the basement door with the handles sticking out. The handles needed to come off. Since I could care less whether or not we sold the foosball table, Joey had to work on getting the handles off. He went downstairs with a bunch of tools and about half an hour later, called me to come help him take it up the basement stairs.

Our plan was to slowly carry it up the stairs and then bring it out past the laundry room and into the garage where Joey would re-assemble the handle bars. I cleared out the dog dishes and other obstructions that cluttered the hallway, thinking we would be bringing the foosball table through in a matter of seconds. I went down into the basement and found joey standing at one end of the foosball table, ready to lift. I grabbed my end and was fortunate enough to be the person going up the stairs first. I say “fortunate” with a mixture of sarcasm and seriousness, because my position had equal advantages and disadvantages. For some reason, before I picked up the foosball table, I did not think it was a very heavy object. Oh how wrong I was! It was easy to pick up and maneuver the table around on a level floor, but once you start fighting gravity the weight seems to double.

I started walking backwards up the steps and after the third one I had to stop. It was getting harder and harder for me to walk up the stairs. The foosball table was gaining more and more weight and I could no longer find proper footing. The two front legs took up an entire step, thus making it impossible for me to stand as close to the table as I could before we started up the stairs. I now had to stand a step above the table, lift the table in the air, move one foot up a step, pull the table up towards the next step, move my other foot to the step above and then let the table down on the stair. The process was exhausting, but at least i wasn’t joey. Joey remained at the bottom and had to maintain pressure on the foosball table, lest it tumble back towards the basement, crushing him along the way. But then again, it was easier for joey to lift the foosball table up to the next step. He only had to push, I had to pull and it was much harder to pull.

So after much struggling and slipping and pushing the foosball table’s two front legs were on the last step of the basement. I lifted it up and pulled it onto the tile floor and felt a little relieved. At this point Dad walked by and informed me that I better not scrape the tile floor with the foosball table’s metal legs. I promptly thanked him for all his help. I thought that we would be done very soon. I turned around. The garage was in sight!!!

I called becky and told her to go hold screen door leading into the garage. I got my second wind. Joey had only four steps before he too would be out of the basement. I picked it up and Joey lifted and pushed up to the next step. 3 more to go!! We lifted again, but before Joey had reached the next step, the foosball table stopped moving. I looked at joey and he looked back at me. “Did you let go?” I asked. “No,” he responded with a confused look on his face, “I thought you did.” I said that I didn’t, so we both shrugged our shoulders and tried again, with a little more force, to get through the door. We lifted again and pushed and then I heard a “SNAP” and a piece of black plastic soared through the air and landed right in the foosball table.

“What was that?” I asked. Joey picked up the piece of black plastic, examined it, and then shifted his gaze to the side of the foosball table and exclaimed, “Crap!” I looked where Joey looked and saw that there were two, small cups on either side of the foosball that made it too wide to fit through the basement door. These cups are used to drop the foosball the in to begin the game. We had broken one, the other was ok. The cups or what was left them, had to come out. Joey noticed that they were held in by two small screws. Dad was now very curious and had taken it upon himself to be the supervisor of this incident that was close to becoming a disaster. We searched for a screwdriver that would fit the screws and was also small enough in length to fit between the table and the wall of the stairwell. It was a very small space and there wasn’t a screwdriver small enough.

Dad, struck with inspiration, took a philips bit from his electric drill and attached to a ratchet, making it possible to squeeze into the tight area and remove the screws. Becky, to my surprise, had remained at the door leading to basement waiting for us to come through. I told her it might be awhile and the she could go back and watch tv, which she did. After joey had finished taking off the first cup, he reached up to hand it and the screws that held it, up to me. I reached down to take it and as i was reaching down I was the philips bit drop from ratchet in joey’s hand and fall into the goal of the foosball table. “Crap!” yelled Joey again. Joey set the ratchet down and with one hand reached into the goal trying to fish the bit out and with the other still held out the cup and screws. I then took the cup and screws from his hand, but as i brought them up towards me, I lost my grip on one of the tiny screws and it too fell into the goal of the foosball table. Joey then glared up at me, obviously angry. I replied a simple, “Whoops.”

After retrieving the bit and the screw, Joey removed the other cup. We were now finally ready, to finish our ascent of the basement stairs. We were both in the hallway at what must have been 20 minutes since we started. Now we could take it into the garage. I called becky back and told her to go hold the screen door again. We opened wide the solid door and slowly moved towards the garage. Becky and Dad suddenly yelled at us to stop. “What?” I asked. Dad told me that the foosball table would not fit past the heavier door because the doorknob sticks out too far. Then becky after examining things in the garage told us that she doubted whether or not we would be able to turn the foosball table past the shelf that was against the wall in the garage.”So what do we do?” I replied. Dad said we had a couple options. We could try taking the foosball table out the back door and around and into the garage. Or we could take the door of its hinges and move the shelfing and hope that maybe it would fit past. I selected the first choice. So we started to turn the foosball table towards the kitchen, but my corner quickly hit the wall. It wasn’t going to be that easy. Dad said we should trying backing it up back into the basement and then bring it forward angling it towards the kitchen. I didn’t think that would work and dad pulled out a tape measure and confirmed my suspicion. We HAD to go out through the garage.

Dad gave me a hammer and a screwdriver and after a few minutes the door was off and stowed temporarily in the laundry room. Joey hopped over the foosball table and we went into the garage to make room for the massive foosball table. The primary obstacle was the metal shelf against the wall. We need to push it out of the way. But nothing in our garage is free standing. Every single item in the garage leans on or is leaning on something else. The shelf was also supported 4 picture frames, one giant table, assorted pieces of wood and a giant, green crate. We move all these and then finally the shelf. We were ready to go.