Dave stood in front of his bay window drinking coffee. The early sun slanted romantically across the rug, but his mind was on the painter’s estimate crumpled in the waste can beside him. Then he saw the bunnies nibbling at his lawn. There were a half dozen of them, chewing on his Kentucky blue grass and his stray dandelions. He placed his ceramic mug on the table by the door, and walked out in bare feet to have a talk.
The bunnies didn’t have much experience with manual labor. They mostly spent their time chewing, reproducing, and contemplating the twilight hours, but Dave convinced them that a few weeks spent painting his house would give them just the economic boost they’d been waiting for. Dave was eloquent, in general, not just on this occasion.
The bunnies showed up the next day eager to earn a few bucks, and Dave supplied them with brushes, tarps, large buckets of off-white exterior paint (washable and guaranteed for twenty years), and a few ladders. “I’m not sure about the ladders,” one of the rabbits said. His left ear drooped a little at the tip and his name was Arnold. His name, however, did not matter to Dave, because he could never tell any of them apart. He called them all Pete.
“Listen, Pete,” Dave said. “When you make a deal, you have to stick with it. I’m sure you and all your family here can find a way.”
Come lunchtime, Dave went out to inspect the work. The bunnies had finished the first floor of the house. The painting company said it would take two weeks, but these small rodents were doing it better, faster, with less mess and, most importantly, a whole lot cheaper. Without showing his excitement, Dave told them to keep at it and rushed inside to whip up a business plan. He figured that with a good foreman, the lopped eared one might do, and a clever marketing campaign, he could manage to pull in an extra three or four thousand a month. And the best part, no labor relations issues. There had to be hundreds, thousands of bunnies in the city desperate for a little spending money. Dave could hire them so far below union rates, he might be able to make enough to quit his job altogether, start an empire of bunny businesses. He grabbed his field guide to native animals to check how much a rabbit could physically carry. He was thinking about a moving business being a nice way to expand after the painting company got off the ground, when he heard a calamitous crash outside.
On the lawn, several dozen bunnies, covered in white paint, sat ruminating on vegetation, ignoring the metal ladder sticking through the bay window. One of the animals stood on his back legs and twitched his splattered ears at Dave. “I told you we couldn’t climb ladders,” he said, and returned to grazing.
Comments are closed.