Last week, I stood on our porch and waved goodbye to visitors. After they drove off, I looked at the railing and noticed two things: (1) it is in desperate need of a paint job, and (2) there was a wishbone drying on it.
It was a bit of a puzzle. I never save wishbones, because I have competitive twins. I tried the make-a-wish-and-crack-the-bone-in-two thing when they were toddlers, and it took half a week to soothe the twin who had lost.
Plus, I hadn’t roasted a chicken since Christmas Day. I wondered whether my husband purchased one of those store-cooked birds when I wasn’t looking and decided to dry out the wishbone to antagonize William and Vivian once more. Since he wasn’t home to verify, I forgot about the mystery.
Until the next day.
“Did you put a wishbone on the railing to dry?” I asked my husband.
“Did I what?” he asked.
I filled him in.
“Are you sure it belongs to a chicken?” he asked.
“No,” I answered. I hadn’t taken Dissecting Animals 101.
“Maybe the bone’s from a rabbit. A magpie could’ve left it there,” he surmised.
I went to the porch to investigate again. I photographed the clue.
I climbed upstairs with the photographic evidence. “It’s bigger than a chicken,” I said. “The wishbone’s thicker.”
My husband said, “That fits with the bunny theory. Except that bunnies don’t have wishbones.”
I chewed on this fact for a moment. “Well, what is it then?” I asked.
“It’s the Flying Killer Rabbit.”
“The what?”
“You know, from Monty Python and The Holy Grail.”
And in case you don’t know, here’s video evidence:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nvs5pqf-DMA]
***
Any mysteries or bizarre objects appearing in your life lately?
I think your husband and I would get along really well
Ya, something tells me you’d get along just fine…
This is one of my favorite Monty Python bits.
It never fails to crack me up.
I immediately when Monty Python, too. I knew it was real. Movies don’t lie.
“went with” not “when.” I’m a dork….
I didn’t even notice the typo. And you’re right: movies don’t lie.
Of course it was the Flying Killer Rabbit.
Of course.
I’ll see if I can work FlyingKillerRabbit into Words with Friends.
You obviously have a Mr. Rogers ghost like me, but yours in hungrier.
And this is Part 1…
When I was in the navy, I came across a roll of “hazardous waste – Do not cross” tape. My daughter (then 13) didn’t think it as funny as I when I put it across the doorway to her room.
That’s hilarious. A roll near the bathroom would be good, too.
I need an emergency room – I just busted a gut!
🙂 The clip is hilarious.
Is that a bird dropping on the railing? Because it looks like a smiley face.
Just checked and Hopper is still here and alive. So it wasn’t his wishbone. Dammit.
You’re doing the inkblot test with bird poop. Hilarious. And I see a face too. Which kind of scares me. Note to self: Don’t watch Hitchcock’s The Birds tonight.
Suspects: The visitors. The things. Neighbors. Distracted scavengers.
Looks like some pagan ritual went down that keeps your house safe from evil spirits or something. If I lived in Calgary I would keep throwing random objects on the railing.
You’d be a suspect, for sure. And there’s a whole other blog about random things on our lawn.
I love combining parenting and crime scene tape. For example, recently we drove by a home whose porch steps were blocked by caution tape. My nine-year-old said, “Ooh. I think someone was murdered there.”
“I think somebody just painted their porch,” I told him.
“It’s always so negative with you,” he said. This is SO my child.
Then there was the time our two oldest, about four and five at the time, expertly enacted a felony stop in my parents’ living room while playing COPS. My husband being a police officer, my parents looked at us with slightly quizzical and wholly horrified expressions.
“We don’t teach them this stuff!” I said. “I swear!”
I love your last line. I so get that. But it’s hilarious (at least from a distance!)
“Va cherche la vache”
🙂 No hurling cows, please!
I love flying killer rabbit! Okay, confession, I love Monty Python period. LOL 🙂 Did you ever make a wish on the bone?
No, I threw the bone out. Then I washed my hands so much I’m invited to the next OCD conference.
Call me crazy, but I would have had ’em mounted on a piece of wood and bought a little engraved gold placard that said: Wishbone of the Flying Killer Rabbit, 2011.
Wait, no. The placard would be silver. 😉
John Cleese would approve, I’m sure.
LOVE the mystery wishbone post.
And including Monty Python is brilliant.
I used to show the witch scene before teaching The Crucible…”well, we did do the nose…”
But the Flying Killer Rabbit? Genius.
Why didn’t I think of showing that clip when I taught The Crucible? You need to submit that to Clay’s pop culture collection.
Pretty wise to avoid a wishbone fight. My first wishbone victory resulted in the wish to always win every wishbone pull for the rest of my life. If the victorious twin made that same wish, the other twin will face a lifetime of losses and tears.
LOL. Well, the killer instinct has worked well for you thus far, right? You got yourself a librarian…
Okay…I am officially freaked out. I am catching up on my blog reading, this is the third entry about dead rabbits. I’ll put my evidence at the end of this comment. To top it off, my daughter came home from a party this morning telling me that the dog at the party had eaten three bunnies. Strange, huh?
http://domermom.com/2011/06/06/mowing-can-be-hard-work/
http://duane-scott.net/sting-of-death/
Is June 6 Fatal Attraction Day? I just read the other two posts and they were published today as well.
Weird convergence, all right!
Leanne, I just checked out your blog and am stunned to see another bunny story! Yours looks more like something a cat might have caught and carried to your porch, thinking it could have a nice quiet dinner. Do squirrels have wishbones??
I think only birds have wishbones.
It was the day of bunny stories, wasn’t it? Too bizarre.
Hmm. Maybe it was a cat…
I majored in Dissecting Animals, with a minor in hand-to-hand combat (thumb wars).
My son hides cheerios like he’s celebrating kellogg’s easter, so those are my presents.
Cheerios. They make such a delightful crunch when you step on them.
haha. a most excellent story. 🙂
I misplaced my book the other day. Where did I find it? The refrigerator. Put there by a toddler, or a distracted Mama? no one will ever know.
The Case of the Missing Book. Too funny. I found the margarine in the cupboard yesterday, but a book in the fridge? Love that.
“Did it bite your bum?” I’m going to say that in an English accent at random times once a day for the rest of the week. Should get me through a couple days of no school sibling fighting.
It’s a classic line, isn’t it? I love MP, not so much that I can quote the whole movie (which annoys me a wee bit), but enough. Good luck with the no-school sibling fighting.
Perhaps the bone’s from the Dead Parrot? Oh wait…he “shuffled off his mortal coil”, not “moved to Calgary”!
Wendy
Love the reference, Wendy. Some mysteries may be better left unsolved!
Whenever there were candles to be blown out, my parents would let my brother or I blow them out, and then re-light the candles so that the other one could blow them out. Just to be fair to both. But I guess you can’t put a broken wishbone back together. Unless that was what you wished for.
You have smart parents.
And the wishbone thing makes my own collarbone hurt (which I’ve broken 3x anyways). I’m not so sure I can handle hearing another one snap!