Somebody Must Love Plush Bunnies

Now, there’s a vanity license plate that says it all! Clearly, this person loves bunny, or, more accurately, bunnies. I’d say there are a few love objects along for the ride.

But just look at all of those launched little lolling lagomorphs being left lying and lazily languishing along the lane! Doesn’t this distracted driver realize that he/she is losing companions all along this crumbling and coarsely cratered causeway? That the berms are being peppered with an entire population of plush pet projectiles?

Well, I imagine it is probably difficult to notice each bouncing bunny barreling out an open window or two, especially considering that one’s view is probably quite effectively blocked by the heaps and heaps of hares still occupying the rear seat, deck, headrests, glove box, drink holders, ashtray, armrests, console, window cranks, floor mats, door pockets and seat cushions. So it is that one’s obsession gets in the way of one’s true love. (Was it ever so true!)

Following close behind this bunny-lover and the unintended roadside carnage of cuddlesome cuties, I am reminded of similarly tragic experiences from highway excursions past:

Like the time I happened to be changing lanes to pass a trundling turquoise pick-up truck grinding gratingly up a long grade. The cantaloupe and teal and magenta and lemon and chartreuse and scarlet and azure and lilac and ecru topknots of a thousand tiny trolls trapped about where a gun rack should be waved at me in the whipping wind lash as I maneuvered out from behind the vehicle. All of a sudden, a brisk beating crosswind lofted scores of the silly little munchkins across by hood and windscreen, bumper and headlights, grille and ornament. Before I could bring my car under control — oh, the horror! — a deathly dusting of diminutive pinkish plastic body parts across several lanes of interstate!

Or consider the instance within the early misty morning hours of late fall, along a dark and damp stretch of road outside Mobile, Alabama. My sleepy eyes were guiding my suburban sedan as it slowly gained on a garish mobile home (or in this case would that be a Mobile home?) bearing more than a few bumper- and body- and window-stickers. Not only did the vehicle display about its rectilinear aluminoid surfaces the campaign blurbs of major and minor candidates of the last several rounds of elections (county, state, city and national), but also the slogans of charitable organizations and social activists. Seven different colleges and universities were represented, as were the dubious academic achievements of a dozen or more grandchildren. I could make out the monikers of eleven punk-metal bands (plus Barry Manilow??!), and perhaps a score or more of pithy advertising slogans of years past (Got Beef? Where’s the Milk? And so on).

Once again I opted to pass this lumbering lunchbox of a vehicle papered with excess verbiage. But apparently the plethora of adhered vinyl decals prevented its driver from sensing my presence.

In the crumpled aftermath of the accident, virtually the only things holding the domicile-on-wheels together were those very same stickers.