Humphrey and Celia had eaten the same breakfast every day for the last forty four years. Scrambled eggs and toast, with fruit on the side for them both, and bacon for Humphrey. The orange juice never had pulp, and the bacon was always slightly overcooked, not because Humphrey liked it like that, but because that was just how things had been for so long. He would eat his bacon in silence, debating how best to show Celia he disapproved of her cooking.
Humphrey would suck on his pipe afterwards, while Celia glared at him from over her glasses, and in response he would pretend not to see, continue to smoke his pipe and read the newspaper, one leg folded neatly over the other.
After breakfast they would turn on the radio and make falsely light conversation over the sports announcements until the weather report came on, at which point Humphrey would utter a variation of one of his three regular comments;
“Bull-snickety. They said it would rain last week and it was dry as a camel’s backside. Nearly killed all my plants.” This was one of his favorite things to say, as Humphrey loved his gardening more than he loved anything else, including but not limited to, Celia.
“Oh, dry spell, indeed. The damn rain last week near about drowned my whole godforsaken garden.” This was another of Humphrey’s favorite things to say, as Humphrey did indeed love his plants, and would have hated to see them drowned a great deal more than he would have hated to see Celia drowned.
“Well, the idiots finally got something right with that rain. I’ll be outside , making sure my plants live ‘till the next disaster.” This comment was significantly less frequent, as Henry loved talking badly about the weather report even more than he loved gardening, and to admit that the report had been correct was exceptionally painful for him.
It was on one of these unfortunately accurate days that Humphrey walked outside to find his garden devoured.
“Goddamn, pestering, rotten rabbits.” He snarled, shaking his meaty, oversized fist at the amputated carrots and demolished stumps of what had once been lettuce. “Celia, that damn woman. If I’ve told her once, she’s an idiot, she should have gotten those damn traps out for the rabbits.”
So Humphrey piled himself into their old truck and drove to the store for rabbit traps, which shortly thereafter led to Humphrey wandering around the store, aisle to aisle, refusing any offered help and getting himself quite confused as to what sort of aisle would have rabbit traps.
Animal care? No, he supposed, that would be for the hippies who actually wanted the damn beasts infesting their houses.
Maybe under the cleaning tools? That was stupid, he admitted to himself, but excused his walk down the aisle by picking up paper towels, for when he killed the infuriating creature.
Aha, he thought, aisle twenty three, Garden Maintenance. His face slid into an expression of deep self-satisfaction, which dripped off him like mud the moment he realized aisle twenty three was more of a warehouse than anything else.
Hunching his shoulders and sulking, Humphrey approached the nearest employee. “Whereareyourdamnrabbittraps?”
A young man of about twenty five turned to face him, a sleepy smile on his face. “That’d be right down here, sir, on your left-”
“Nevermind, damnit.” Humphrey growled, pushing past the kid. “I found ‘em.”
The sleepy smile brightened, and the corners of dark blue eyes crinkled with happiness. “I’m so glad, sir, you have yourself a terrific day.”
Humphrey raised an eyebrow at the kid, and shuffled away from him, his arms full with collapsed metal traps, and chills running down his spine. “Damn kids today.” He muttered. “No spines, heads all bungled up by yes my lord and no my lady, bum-kissers.”
He continued his self-serve-sermon this way until he reached home, at which point he set up the traps and went about his day.
A week passed, and no rabbits were caught. Humphrey was almost ready to bait the trap with crop of his own, even though they’d been left untouched since his last pestilential visit. He needed the satisfaction of getting one of the rabbits back for his old, wounded pride, after all.
So Humphrey baited the traps with one of the carrots that had already been mangled by rabbits, reset them all, and spaced them absolutely perfectly along the edges of his precious garden, then went to bed.
The next morning began the same as every other did. The bacon was a little burnt, and Humphrey wore his usual burnt-bacon scowl while eating it, which always brightened his day. Celia glared at his smoking pipe, and the weathermen were wrong again, which made Humphrey as happy as it always did before.
On this particularly average morning, Humphrey decided to step outside after the weather report to see whether his large metal traps had caught anything.
The moment he’d walked outside, he began cursing so vehemently that Celia, who rarely cared at all what Humphrey said, came outside to see what strange delights for her had happened to her crude husband.
The cages were not cages anymore. Celia could see clearly that this was an elaborate prank on the local grouch. All of the long metal strips that had been woven together to make the cages had been taken apart and welded back together, in the six-foot shape of a colossal rabbit.
Humphrey cursed for quite some time after that, swearing about neighborhood louses and making many references to thumbscrews and the police department. Celia finally coaxed her overly loud husband back inside with the promise that she would replace the traps herself the next day.
Celia did just so, only in a much more timely manner than Humphrey had, partially because of her willingness to ask a blue-eyed young associate where to find the traps, the moment she had walked in to the store. Coming home that night, she set up the traps and baited them right away. Then, she went inside and prepared dinner for her still fouler-than-usually-tempered husband.
The next morning Celia awoke to the sound of frying bacon and the smell of particularly strong orange juice. She shuffled into the kitchen as quickly as her old bones would allow her to, and sat herself down in her usual spot at the breakfast table.
Breakfast was remarkably good that morning, the bacon was cooked just well enough, and there was no presence of a pipe after the meal.
The weather report, too, was pleasant. Clear skies were predicted for the next few days, though that wouldn’t mean well for Humphrey’s garden, Celia supposed.
“Lovely weather they‘re saying, eh? I think I’d like a walk today, wouldn’t you, Celia?” Asked the six-foot snowy white rabbit who sat across from her at the table. “After all, the plants will get water when it rains, as it always does, eventually.
Celia smiled into his sleepy blue eyes and reached out to stroke one of his long, soft ears. “Why, of course I’ll take a walk, dear. And thank you for making breakfast, you know, I’m just hopeless at cooking bacon.”