Rabit-proof fence

The other day I was working on a fence in the side yard. At first I was just going to paint the thing. But the more I looked at it, the worse it got, and finally I ended up tearing the whole thing down using a combination of hammers, a nail bar, my pickup and, where need be, my foot.

Once it was torn down, I had to rebuild it. Well, I didn't have to. I wanted to plant a tree there, but I got one of those looks from the wife that said, "You're going to rebuild the fence, right?"

So I rebuilt it. Sort of. Which is to say, I'm not a great fence builder or builder of anything for that matter. This fence reminded me of that.

I was using a handsaw to cut pieces off of two-by-fours. It was the kind of work an 10-year-old practices at when he's building a fort in the backyard.

(We had a "fort" when we were kids. It was a rickety old wooden box back in the woods where we hid some magazines called o-u-i, pronouncing every letter. It wasn't until I was 20 that I found out that it was French for "yes." We sure were dumb kids.)

So at any rate, I was using this handsaw and wondering to myself, "Why don't you build more things around the house? You know, fix stuff using your hands?"

Of course, I've never been good at that sort of thing. Not even in seventh grade shop. We had a shop teacher, an Italian guy who would come up behind you while you were working on your project and grab your butt. Not in a sexual way but in a coach-player-like way that probably would have worked out great if he was a coach and we were players But he wasn't. He was a shop teacher and we were nervous 12-year-olds around power tools.

Our butts were very sensitive to touching. I haven't cut a straight line since.

So back to this fence. I was sawing along the saw, like magic, carved from the scraggly pencil line I drew as a guide and splintered off the end of the board.

"Perfect!" I declared.

I made a few more crooked cuts and went busily to work making a crooked a fence, humming show tunes like "Oklahoma!" as I busily lined up boards in such a way that the fence was neither flush at the top nor at the bottom.

It'll look better when you paint it and those flowers you planted come up, I figured, which really isn't altogether untrue. It will look better. But it still won't look good.

It was the sort of job that when I got all done I figured no one would really notice the fence wasn't straight. But Olivia, the mouthy middle kid, piped up and said, "Buck'll go right under that!"

Buck's this big, white, pet albino bunny that jumps around our backyard. He's been loose as long as I can remember, but he's never run away.

When I finished the fence, he did what Olivia said he would do. He slipped right under that fence. But then he slipped back again. I think he did it on purpose, just to show me he could. Rabbits can wink, you know.