The end of an era?

By Andy Young

The 100-year agreement designating the bunny as Easter’s official animal has just expired. Until recently it was assumed the continuation of the adorable cottontail’s reign as the holiday’s trademark was a mere formality.

However, determined digging by attorneys skilled in trademark law has revealed the 1925 contract included a clause allowing, after a century has gone by, a one-time opportunity for either of the involved parties to “opt out” of the agreement.

Bunny fans are concerned, and with reason. Easter’s original owners sold the holiday to a consortium of greeting card conglomerates, chocolatiers, and plush toy manufacturers in the late 1970s, and hammering out a new deal with a cartel consisting of a bunch of corporate CEOs is a lot different than negotiating with a genial pope and the Vatican.

Easter has become a multi-billion-dollar industry, and there’s no shortage of groups and/or individuals wanting a piece of it. Those trying to get Easter to re-up with the bunny have their work cut out for them. The competition is fierce, as plenty of animals are vying for what is a potential gold mine, not to mention a public relations bonanza.

“Who says bunnies are cuter than squirrels, chipmunks, or hedgehogs?” asks Avaricious Q. Farquhar, an attorney representing a variety of small animals.

American Avian Association president Harold Rapacious called bunnies “Yesterday’s news,” dismissively adding, “they’ve had their day.” The AAA represents groups advocating for both the Easter Parrot and the Easter Dove.

Adds Nestor Skroobawl, public relations director for a group touting the Easter Eagle, “When’s the last time a bunny laid any eggs, let alone the Easter kind?”

Ching-Ching Yeah, spokesperson for the Easter Panda Association declares, “The ugliest panda is infinitely more adorable than the cutest bunny.”

“What have rabbits ever done besides rob Mr. McGregor’s garden?” asks Conrad Eurograbber, head of a group hoping a lovable, drooling service animal, the Easter St. Bernard, will gallop in with a basket of Easter eggs each April and become the holiday’s future logo.

“It’s high time Easter ends their unholy alliance with these unseemly creatures!” huffs Eunice Priggish, who has campaigned for the Easter bunny’s excommunication ever since “Bunnies” became an integral part of the Playboy empire in 1960.

Attacks on the Easter Bunny aren’t limited to the Northern Hemisphere. “You call those hops?” scoffs Laughlin Downunder, spokesperson for an Australian group bidding to replace the Easter Bunny with the Easter Kangaroo. “Compared to one of our ‘roos, bunnies don’t hop; they limp!”

Individuals or groups pushing to replace the bunny include proponents of the Easter Elephant, the Easter Tiger, the Easter Flamingo, the Easter Weasel, the Easter Jellyfish, and the Easter Giraffe, among others. “Sure, we’re a longshot,” says Spiros Noncomposmentis, who represents a group trying to install an unlikely holiday animal. “But if we don’t point out the attractiveness of the Easter Jackal, who will?”

Says one industry insider: “Those rabbit people have the toughest job this side of selling pork in Saudi Arabia.”

The Easter Bunny’s spokesperson, Virtuous D. Fender, vigorously defends her client. “Rabbits in general and the Easter Bunny in particular are inherent parts of society. Who’d watch a movie called ‘Who Framed Roger Raccoon’?” she asks rhetorically. “And seriously, could Bugs Beaver have dominated Elmer Fudd and Yosemite Sam? Buck teeth aren’t everything; long ears matter, too.”

Ms. Fender admits, though, that with billions of Easter industry dollars at stake, she and her leporine clients are facing an uphill battle.

“There’s no question it’s dog-eat-dog out there,” she says of the current competition for official Easter animal status.

She’d better hope it’s not jackal-eat-bunny. <

Andy Young: Going nuts over acorns

By Andy Young

Recently I was entertaining company when a sudden noise coming from outside the house made my guest pause mid-sentence and murmur, with a concerned expression, “That sounds like gunfire.” Chuckling knowingly, I explained it was just the sound of acorns falling onto my garage’s roof.

Moments later we heard a sudden rat-a-tat-tat that sounded like machine gun fire. I don’t want friends thinking I reside in a war zone, but that second volley was indeed alarming. Thankfully, it was just another fusillade of acorns coming down in rapid fire fashion on my neighbor's metal roof.

Were acorns locusts, people would be describing what’s currently going on in southern Maine in biblical terms. There is no overstating how many of these ovine nuts are being produced by the oak trees along my street.

There’s always a reason for what Mother Nature does, even if human beings can’t always understand her rationale. I know next to nothing about dendrology (the study of trees; I looked it up), but that ignorance allows me to make up my own explanations regarding why certain things occur (and what’s going to happen as a result) without being contradicted by any pesky documented facts about the subject. Intelligence and education can be awfully inconvenient at times, but fortunately I don’t have that problem when it comes to science.

Or in many other areas, now that I think of it.

I’ve decided that because of all these acorns there’s going to be a bumper crop of small rodents around here next year, since they’re currently stockpiling acorns, and will no doubt be gorging themselves on them this winter.

I’d like to take this opportunity to invite any winged predators who can read this to take up residence rent-free in any tree in my neighborhood. It’d be nice to thin the chipmunk population, since they’ve been a local scourge for the past few years. Given that most of these objectionable rodents will be all but inert next summer thanks to their upcoming gluttony, well, it’s likely that any nearby owls, hawks, or falcons will be looking at a potential cornucopia thanks to the hundreds of morbidly obese chipmunks and squirrels that are all but certain to be waddling around next year. It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel for any flying carnivore.

The only reason the local rodent population hasn't exploded even further is that there’s competition when it comes to consuming the ongoing oak-provided bounty. Pigeons, ducks, woodpeckers and other birds go for acorns because they’re high in vitamins, carbohydrates, and good fats. Blue Jays have been known to bury acorns and go back to recover them months later.

Bears, possums, and raccoons are all acorn-consumers, too. Another fun fact: acorns can make up 25 percent of a deer’s autumn diet.

So why can’t hungry humans eat some of this fall’s acorn bounty? Well, they taste pretty bitter for one thing. They also contain tannins, which are complex chemical substances derived from phenolic acids. Tannins are considered nutritionally undesirable for humans, even though they can, in low doses, stimulate the immune system and help lower blood pressure and cholesterol. Unfortunately, ingesting too many of them can irritate the stomach lining and intestines, which can cause kidney damage. Tannins can also be toxic to certain animals, so don’t feed acorns to your dog, horse, pig, or sheep.

Eating acorns can harm humans, yet mice, squirrels, chipmunks and deer can munch on them to their little hearts’ content. How does that make sense?

I wonder if an owl or a hawk could take down an acorn-bloated possum, deer, or bear? <

Andy Young: Stream of Consciousness

By Andy Young

Columnist

Someone told me recently that I was difficult to chat with, claiming I can’t stay focused on one subject long enough to have an intelligent conversation. I don’t know what she was talking about.

Baseball’s designated hitter rule is stupid. Claiming “pitchers can’t hit” is even more foolish. In youth baseball right up through high school the pitcher is generally one of the best batters on his team, if not THE best. But no one can hit without regular opportunities to do so, and that’s what happens to the pitcher when they start letting a DH (an abbreviation for a Latin term that roughly translates to “bad fielder”) take his place.

The chipmunk population has exploded this summer! Maybe my neighbor who feeds them is part of the reason, but still, you’d think they’d want to live in her yard, since that’s where the food is. But no; the second-biggest Chipmunk Condo in the neighborhood lies beneath my front steps. The largest one is under the front steps of the guy who lives across the street from the chipmunk nourisher. He’s got no more use for the furry scourges than I do.

I love bran muffins.

Yellow ultra-fine-point Sharpies are useless! The ink is virtually invisible. Writing a letter in yellow Sharpie would be like refereeing a basketball game with a dog whistle.

I’ve never been to the Ozarks, but I’d like to get there someday. I’ve also never been to North Korea. I’m okay with that, though.

I don’t think anyone under the age of 60 has bought a radio in the last decade.

I have never finished the Sudoku puzzle in the daily newspaper on a Friday. The Monday thru Thursday (and Saturday) ones are cake, and I can usually do the Sunday one. But Fridays are impossible. Maybe there’s a fiendish Sudoku Master somewhere who’s bent on achieving world domination by bewildering all his potential opposition with unsolvable logic conundrums.

Why does anyone care about the Kardashians, or similar celebrities who are famous for being famous?

Playing professional or college football during a pandemic is even dumber than playing it when there isn’t a pandemic. Greed, pure and simple, is why NFL team owners and collegiate athletic officials want games this fall, even if they’re played in empty stadiums.

Since social distancing began, I’ve been biking a lot more. So far I’ve pedaled a distance that would require more than two tanks of gas to travel via automobile. That’s $50 or so extra dollars in my pocket, plus a tiny amount of pollution I haven’t created.

But I’ve seen a lot of discarded cans and bottles on the side of the road.

Is anyone in favor of indiscriminately strewing trash out car windows, or in the woods? Littering is selfish, lazy and environmentally destructive. Being pro-littering is like being pro-cancer, pro-bullying, or pro-coronavirus. Making the deposit on bottles and cans a quarter (up from a nickel) per container might not solve the problem of littering, but I bet it wouldn’t make it worse.

I just discovered that if you watch the Three Stooges for more than thirty consecutive seconds, they stop being funny.

Of all the things Americans value, a television is probably the least essential.

By the time my children get to be my age, there probably won’t be newspapers anymore. Well, at least they’ll never be frustrated by the Friday Sudoku.

Someone told me recently that I was difficult to chat with, claiming I can’t stay focused on one subject long enough to have an intelligent conversation. I don’t know what she was talking about. <