Bunny Foo-Fooed

(circa 1991-1993)
I lived in Nyack New York
as a graduate school student
with a land lady named Mary
who was 80 years old, 
and rode the bus into
NYC every Tues to make
book recordings for the blind.

My rent charge was $0,
she was happy to feel 
guarded having a young person 
in the house for company
and a living security agent.

She had worked at Fortune Magazine
for 40 years, was a radical, 
a flapper in her younger years,
and had  a tabby cat named Violet
whose DNA did not trigger the feline
to catch mice.

Mary bought  Havaheart
(Have a Heart) traps
that capture the mice
without killing them in
the small green room/potting room
of her "puritan gray" painted
home on Piermont Ave by the 
Hudson River.

Part of my tenant duties were 
to take the captured mice and
to release them in the wilds of
English Ivy that invaded the 
wooded area behind her home.

Knowing the mice would 
find their way back into the
house  to enjoy the warmth,
shelter and the crumbs in
the kitchen again,

when Mary was not home
or taking a nap,  
or on a walk,
or on an errand 
or vacation,

I released the  captured mice
into her back yard and with 
the steel pointed shovel in hand,
released the mouse
as the vixen in the
English tradition of the fox hunt,

chasing those cute
little critters around -
smacking, swinging and pounding 
the shovel like Bunny Foo Foo,
"scooping up the field mice
and boppin' them on the head."

In the Industrial Revolution,
some called the 1%
Captains of Industry,  
while others called them
Robber Barons.

Some call mice cute,
others, vermin.
Some of the artsy
think of vermin 
as cute.

I am sure the family 
members of the Black Death
wished they had not killed
so many "evil cats" in the 
Medieval Ages had they known
mice and rats were the
carriers of the Plague.

Of course,  
most hetero or bi-sexual men
will call the potential
booty-call dating apps
hook-up girl beautiful,  
until she ends up
on an episode of
"Women Who Kill."

The mice that survived
and escaped the
mortal assassinaiton attempt
by blunt force, 
deserved the chance to 
get in live the high life
of being a domicile of 
Mary's abode -

until the next time
they happend to 
end up in the 
Havaheart trap
for a second 
or third time.

   Salute to
Bunny Foo Foo.