There was no display of huge teeth or horrible monsterness.
Abandoned buildings have long held intrigue for me. Who built them and why did they leave? Where did the builders come from and how did they get there – were they escaping hardship elsewhere or pursuing the dream of their own land? Did they arrive by wagon train or on foot? Where did they go? Did they die in some tragic pioneer episode – botulism or a massacre? Did the wind or the loneliness drive someone mad enough to murder their family and walk off into the winter? Perhaps a more pleasant scenario, a bachelor farmer married the love of his life and moved to town. Or the family outgrew the honeymoon house and built a new home closer to water or in a more protected location. The possibilities are endless.
Then, of course, there is Monty Python. Yes, I know this sounds like a non-sequitur. Remember in Monty Python and the Holy Grail when they arrive at the cave where the Grail’s location is written on the wall? The cave is guarded by a most horrible monster with huge teeth.
As the knights sneak up to the cave and look upon the entrance they see a rabbit quietly grazing. The knight, aghast at the idea of fearing a rabbit, berates his squire, “You bloody tit! It’s a bunny rabbit.” The assault on the cave does not go well but eventually the knights prevail, the rabbit is slain, and the final words of the dying man who wrote the location of the grail are revealed. “The holy grail is in the castle of Aaaaaaaaaaah.” Unable to complete the sentence before dying, the man merely wrote his last gasp rather than the castle’s name.
This still makes me laugh. And I still quote this movie more often than I care to admit. I mean, sometimes it’s just necessary to exclaim, “She turned me into a newt!”
Right. Abandoned buildings. I often trespass. It’s not always intentional and it’s certainly never in the form of walking up to someone’s house and peering through the windows. Unless, of course, the house happens to be abandoned.
I’m fascinated by the construction, by the things left behind, the things that have moved in, the sounds, the views through the missing windows or the leaning doors, even the smells. I’ve found whole barn owl families, pack rats, phoebes, barn swallows, cows, horses, and trees living in abandoned houses, stoves with pots on them, closets with clothes still hanging, curtains at the windows, and pantries with dishes, bottles, and tins.
As I debated whether this particular building was too far from the road for relatively unobtrusive trespassing, a pickup stopped, the driver rolled down the window and told me I was welcome to take a look. Dilemma solved.
It was built with logs and had been expanded, the stacked logs of one structure butted against the cut logs of the addition. The roof had mostly collapsed and an elderberry shrub grew in the middle of a room up through the roof joists. Shreds of wallpaper hung in a few ragged sections – it was cloth with frayed edges and a delicate, pale green leafy pattern still visible.
There was a door between the old section with the log cabin-style stacked corners and the more recent addition. Picking my way through the litter on the floor and ducking under the fallen logs, I stepped through the door and slowly turned to view the whole room, to look out of the windows, to look back into the old house.
And then I saw that I was not alone.
A shiny black bunny eye and twitchy nose were the only giveaways. Perfectly colored and absolutely still, there was no display of huge teeth or horrible monsterness. Just a bunny hanging out above a door in an abandoned house. But… how did it get there? Where did it come from? Did its family get too big and expand into this new home? Maybe it was a bachelor bunny courting a cute girl bunny in a downstairs condo. And who knew rabbits could climb walls?
I took this photo for the sheer delight – it is not often you find a rabbit watching from above a door frame. There was no evidence of rabbit viciousness but, sadly, also no scrawled note telling me who the people were or where they had gone.