Dead Rabbits Don't Go In the Refrigerator

I just finished reading my dad's most recent blog post which was about spending a couple of year's of his early childhood with a dead wildcat in his family's freezer. He has some bizarre stories (kind of a bizarre guy, truth be told) and you should check them out. Just click on this link to A Middle Aged Southerner... (and you should know in advance that he is giving himself some grace by calling himself middle aged): http://middleagedsoutherner.blogspot.com/.

Anyway, the story of the wildcat made me think about the summer I lived in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL. I had just completed my first year of seminary and, as most of us do, I was doing my supervised ministry internship. I was really fortunate in that I had a great supervisor and had a really fun summer. I also lucked out by where I had the opportunity to live. Perhaps you have heard of the PGA tour that takes place at Sawgrass? Well, I lived in a condo in the Sawgrass community that a fellow seminarian owned and was not using for the summer. It was a great location: yards from the beach, great shopping, cool animals to observe. Just a generally neat place.

However, there were some oddities to the home also. There are two I remember in particular: First, the whole place smelled like moth balls. And I don't mean in the sense where when you first take out your winter coat in November or December and you think, "Oooh, this is a little stinky." No, it was more like, "What in the name of God happened here? Are the neighbors unruly moths that have to be stopped at no cost?" I am quite sure that moth genocide took place in that condo.

The second incident occured shortly after I had moved in. I had just returned from the grocery store with my first "load" of groceries in my new home. I moved the few things that had been left in there (which, first of all, uggh to that!) to make room for my sparkling new groceries. I was opening the crisper drawer and was suprised to find a cache of batteries in there. No biggie, not so unusual. I picked them up to move to a more remote corner of the fridge, when I noticed a strange grocery bag underneath the batteries. It was closed up really tightly-perhaps that should have been my clue to stay out of it. But, nooooooooo. I had to investigate. And much to my great, GREAT dismay, there was a F#*@#*G rabbit pelt in the bag. I mean, what the hell? Why would any minister-to-be need to be cooling a dadgum rabbit fur? It freaked my shit out, for sure. I seriously thought maybe I should invest in a little beer fridge so as to avoid any other unsavory encounters with the recently dead. I mean, come on, a dead rabbit next to your cold cuts...

But then my dad came to visit and I showed it to him. His response? "Hey, I went eye to eye with a wildcat every time I opened the freezer for two years of my life."

I guess everything is relative.