SIR HARRY BUTT

After our night of trivia wraps up, my friend drives us both back to her house, where my car is parked.  She parks in her usual space in the driveway, and my car is yards away near the street, so it strikes me as odd that she walks me to my car.

"We have a fisher cat in the neighborhood," she tells me.

This news is both exciting (Hey, there's a damn FISHER CAT running loose in suburbia) and disturbing (Holy shit, there's a damn FISHER CAT running loose in suburbia), and a very tiny part of me is jealous (for about a millisecond).

We don't have exotic wild animals in this neighborhood.  In my neighborhood there are chipmunks, squirrels, skunks, the occasional pissed off turkey, and river rats.  Yes, big-ass, ugly, hairy, slimy, scavenging river rats.  The good news is that as long as we don't have bird feeders or any trash outside, the river rats stay close to the industrial park along the river across the street. I know they're there because I spent a summer working inside one of the factory buildings, and the bathroom was downstairs.  If we looked down the stairs to the next lower floor, we could see the rats running a round.

But, our neighborhood is not without its mascot.  We have Sir Harry Butt.  Sir Harry Butt is a wild bunny who lives, strangely enough, under one of the meager bushes in our limited yard.  Sir Harry Butt isn't the brightest animal: he thinks freezing in complete stillness in the middle of the brick driveway is real camouflage.

I doubt I'll ever have to walk anyone to her car on of account of Sir Harry Butt.  Still, though, there's the thrill of having an undomesticated animal as the neighborhood mascot.  Here's to the Harry Butts ... or something like that.  Go, Harry Butt!