Chris: Ah. Mail’s here.
(Chris exits)
(Chris enters)
Chris: Wow! Something from Beth! What could it be? It’s an odd-shaped package. So thin.
Thistle: It’s mine.
Chris: Hush.
(Chris opens package)
Thistle: What did she send me?
Chris: She didn’t send you anything. She sent me a leaf.
Thistle: She sent YOU a leaf? Yeah, right. Give it to me.
Chris: It’s
Thistle: Give it to me NOW.
Chris: It’s a sumac leaf. It’s not good for you.
Thistle: I want it.
Chris: See?
(Thistle sniffs the leaf.)
Thistle: Ew.
Chris: I told you.
Thistle: That’s a bad leaf.
Chris: It’s related to poison oak, and it’s probably
Thistle: I hate that leaf.
Chris: Ah, there’s something else in here, in some manila paper.
(Chris pulls the manila paper out of the package. A red oak leaf falls out of the paper, fluttering to the carpet.)
Thistle: GROWR!
(Thistle leaps on oak leaf, begins eating it.)
Chris: Hey!
(Chris reaches down, takes leaf away from Thistle.)
Thistle: Hey!
Chris: Aw, it’s a red oak! I haven’t seen one of these in
Thistle: Give that back now.
Chris: It’s not even for you, and I just want to look
Thistle: It’s mine. I’m not finished eating it.
Chris: Simmer down, bun-bun.
Thistle: GIVE. IT. BACK. NOW.
Chris: Ha. Poor bun-bun.
Thistle: No, seriously, listen. GIVE ME BACK MY LEAF.
Chris: Stop it.
Thistle: Give it back or I’ll fucking cut you, man.
Chris: No you won’t.
Thistle: I have a knife.
Chris: You do not.
Thistle: I have a knife, and I’ll stab you in the eye if you don’t give me back my goddamn leaf.
Chris: You don’t have a knife.
Thistle: I meant to say gun. I have a gun. It looks like a knife.
Chris: Yeah, right. Go eat some kibble.
Thistle: Look. I asked nicely. Now give me my fucking leaf.
(Thistle pulls out knifegun)
Chris: Hey! Put that away!
(Thistle aims knifegun at Chris’ eye)
Thistle: The leaf. If you don’t mind.
Chris: Um, OK. Here.
(Chris hands Thistle the oak leaf.)
Thistle: About fucking time, man.
(Thistle eats the leaf.)
Chris: You’re really pushing your luck, bunny rabbit. You forget that I can
Thistle: Shut up and give me the other leaf.
Chris: You don’t want it.
(Thistle pulls out the knifegun again.)
Chris: Sigh.
(Chris offers Thistle the sumac leaf.)
Thistle: Ew! That’s disgusting! What are you trying to do to me?
Chris: Whatever.
Thistle: Give me the manila paper. I want it.
Chris: Fine.
(Chris hands the manila paper to Thistle.)
Thistle: I HATE this paper!
(Thistle tears the manila paper to shreds, angrily, and with loud growling noises.)
FIN
(This play is a faithful portrayal of actual events. All dialogue is verbatim and everything here actually happened exactly this way, and only a couple things were embellished very slightly.)
Note:Many old comments were lost in a database crash in 2008. Some conversations may seem to make less sense than they would have. A few will make more sense now.
17 comments on "Mail from Beth: a play in one act"h00t! tummy hurts from laughing now.
Which has caused my Molly cat to cast a highly dubious glance (one upside-down green eye on the lookout for further questionable behavior). Ok, ok, settling down, jeez.
Few of us really notice what merciless thugs our little mammalian neighbors are.
We’re all doing Disney riffs in our heads, and we fail to notice they’re doing Tony Soprano on steroids.
The whole natural world is street gangs, biker bars and knife fights.
We’re all “Ah the little birdies! How beautiful their gay song!”
And they’re sitting up in the trees all “Hey fuck you! Yeah you!! FUCK YOU!! This is my tree! My neighborhood. MY tree!! Yeah, FUCK YOU!! C’mon, you wanna piece of me? You want a piece of ME?? I’ll shove this beak up your ass TO MY EYEBALLS, shithead!!”
And that’s just the sparrows.
...
Now that I know about ‘em, though, I want a knifegun.
Oh, Thistle, Thistle. Tch. Don’t make Papa show you Fatal Attraction.
Thistle knows me too well to be swayed by that. He knows I don’t go for the kind of women who’d cook a pet bunny.
(Leave him flayed on the doormat as a present, sure. But not so much with the cooking.)
excellent play!
jedediah, where did you FIND that?
Next time, Thistle gets his own package. I don’t want to be responsible for domestic violence, or fur-trimmed boots.
What Hank said (and he said it very well, I might add).
This demonstrates how being a conservative is natural. Kinda like infanticide.
As the moon and your terror together rise, humped figures with bandannaed ears assemble to thump for war:
POIson SUmac
POIson SUmac
POIson SUmac
Too funny! who knew a rabbit with a knifegun would be that dangerous!
Carolyn H.
Time to dig up this old thing again.
bunnies are burdened with looking terminally cute, excellent for under-radar operations. but they are sharp of tooth and claw, with fearsome powerful thumping leg-power. BEWARE THE AWESOME RABBIT. SEND HIM MAIL. NOW.
Ow, ow, the laughing - Thistle, you are so bad.
OK Chris - taxonomy time - I think what I sent you is Staghorn Sumac, Rhus typhina. Poison sumac (Toxicodendron vernix or Rhus vernix) is, I gather, considered by some to be in the same genus and by others not to be at all. I always thought it wasn’t closely related. Was there poison sumac in western NYS? Where I lived, I never heard of anyone getting into it; poison ivy was much the worse threat. Here are some pics and a really great photo of a poison sumac skin rash. You might consider showing that to Thistle: http://www.poison-sumac.org/
Oh, it’s definitely staghorn sumac, Beth. But Rhus and Toxicodendron are very close genera — sister taxa, almost — so that’s why I told Thistle what I did.
Also, following links from that lovely skin rash page you offer, holy crap.
Re: preceding comment: (slow, narroweyed smile).
I always thought Thistle had a bit of the ol’ Mack in him.
Theriomorph,
Loved the hip-hip hop-hop video.
I’m feeling warmer toward my rat neighbors now. They’re really very polite, preferring to keep a respectful distance. Not a one of ‘em has pulled a weapon on me. Now I realize it’s knifegun-toting thugbunnies I should be concerned about. And based on that video, it would appear they run in gangs!
This - http://youtube.com/watch?v=_Ez5QPW-ku4 - has got to be a close relative of your Thistle - NOT safe to watch with the bunny around. He has enough ideas of his own.