Soundtrack in my head: They Might Be Giants, “Birdhouse In Your Soul”
In the dining room of our co-op house, we have this huge white dry-erase board on which we post messages and announcements. A couple of weeks ago, somebody drew on it a picture of a rabbit with long ears and whiskers that made him look somewhat like Confucius or an old wizard, and next to it was a caption that said, “Little Bunny Foo-Foo says, ‘Invest your money.’”
I have no idea who put that picture up or why, the origin of that name, or whether it had any influence in causing stock prices to collapse around the world the next day. But the next day, the ears grew extraordinarily elongated, as well as more hairy and stubbly. The caption next to Little Bunny Foo-Foo said something entirely different, though I can’t quite remember what—maybe something like “Eat your greens.”
The day after that, someone drew a colony of baby birds that had decided to make nests out of each of Little Bunny Foo-Foo’s ears. At that point, Little Bunny Foo-Foo was saying, “Say your goodbyes,” probably because we had a few visitors that had been staying with us that were leaving that weekend. Later, somebody added a couple of baby birds flying around the area. My foot was really hurting that day, and I had to erase a couple of baby birds so that I would have room to write message asking someone to walk the dog for me.
The next day, another housemate drew a little bit of background scenery, and it looked like Little Bunny Foo-Foo was either on a ship or on the edge of some open water. Then later that evening, yet someone else tried to make Little Bunny Foo-Foo look like the figure out of Munch’s painting “The Scream”, though the hands on the side of the face looked more like extra thick whiskers.
Finally someone drew a picture of a bird landing on one of the ears, folding it over, knocking over the nest built in one of Little Bunny’s ears. Now several confused looking baby birds were flitting about, trying to figure out what happened. At this point, Little Bunny Foo-Foo was saying, “Aaaaaaah!” Either Bunny’s ear was hurting, or perhaps they wanted to make “The Scream” reference more obvious. After such a tragic turn of events, someone decided to erase Little Bunny Foo-Foo altogether.
I’ve always thought that if you get more people living together and interacting on a daily basis, more interesting things would start happening. I think this is living proof of the cultural richness possible with co-op living.
Um, why do you have hands on the side of your face like the character in Munch’s painting?
