OFFICE-BOB.COM

Enough time has passed for me to be able to put this in words.

After the sudden death of Max I was between pets and was looking for another rabbit, so in the fall of 2004 I went to the Vancouver SPCA to see what bunnies they had. I had a few specific things I was looking for: I didn’t want a lop or a dwarf, and I wanted a larger rabbit with big ears.

After looking around I found a brown rabbit of unknown pedigree named Antonia; she needed a home so I “borrowed” her for a week to make sure we were a good fit. After the week had gone by I was sure I wanted her so I filled out the paperwork and she was mine.

When you get a shelter animal you’re expected to have them spayed or neutered if it hasn’t already been done, so I made an appointment with the vet to have her spayed. When I went to pick her up after surgery the vet asked me into his office and informed me that it wasn’t until they’d opened her up that they noticed that not only didn’t she have any girl bits, she’d never had any– she was a neutered male. So much for assuming the shelter staff knew how to check a rabbit’s sex.

Anyway, from that point on Antonia was known as Antoine.

My rabbits have tended to have unusual names such as Judah Bun-Hur, “KISS’s Toblerone” (the pedigree name of Toby), Chip (so called because he had a piece missing from one ear, the result of a difficult birth), and Max (named after one of the characters in the Sam and Max Computer game series). Antoine’s full name was:

“Louisiana Back Bay Bayou Bunny Bordelais, a la Antoine.”

(Yeah, I like Bugs Bunny cartoons – so sue me)

I’m sure unnecessary surgery didn’t improve his disposition any, but Antoine was always a bit of a cranky fellow. He never bit, but he certainly didn’t like it when you made sudden moves around him – rabbits are prey animals but I’ve been around enough of them to know that his reactions were a bit more pronounced than usual. While I don’t know for sure, my guess is that he was either a school pet or kept by kids who would poke him through the bars of his cage.

Still, Antoine settled into our lives and made himself at home. Even though he was never a snuggle bunny you could tell that he enjoyed being petted because he’d get up from wherever he was watching the world go by and come over to pester you when he felt you weren’t giving him the proper amount of attention. He especially enjoyed having his ears lightly stroked and strangely enough, if you scratched his butt he’d start reflexively licking the floor.

Everything was going well until a few weeks ago when he stopped eating. In rabbits this is Not A Good Thing and we started taking steps to resolve the problem; things seemed to be improving when he suddenly took a turn for the worse.

I was downstairs with him when he suddenly hopped upstairs to visit my wife (she said he ran around and binkied a couple of times) and as he came downstairs I heard a loud thump as if he’d lost his balance and fallen. I found him lying at the bottom of the stairs, breathing heavily, and before I could do anything he had what appeared to be a heart attack and died.

I think he knew his time was coming and he wanted to say goodbye before he went, which is why he went upstairs that one last time.

Good bye, Antoine. I miss you.

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As you’ll recall from our previous episode, I was getting irate calls from Crazy Missouri Woman who was convinced that I’d been calling her and hanging up. I flagged her number with a specific ringtone and added her to my “special” contact list so I’d know when she was calling. Last week she called a couple of times but I didn’t answer, and she didn’t leave any new rants on my voicemail.

Well, she just called again.

I’d decided that the next time she called I’d answer, if for no other reason that to make her pay long distance charges. I picked up the call and readied myself for some ranting and raving, only to be subjected to the most awful, hideous, totally polite phone call I’d ever received.

0_o

I said hello and she asked me if my number was for a residence. I told her that she was calling a cellphone and she said she’d been trying to track down who was prank-calling her; when I told her I was in Canada she sounded genuinely shocked. I then told her that I had no idea why her call display was showing my number when she was sure the calls were coming from Florida (I have no idea why she was sure of that, unless it was because the person she suspected of making the calls lived there) but that I was not calling her. She said that she was calling the numbers back to confirm them and was then going to forward everything to the Missouri Attorney General. I told her that if they wanted my cellphone records they could subpoena them and that I wished her luck in her efforts, at which point she thanked me and when I told her to have a nice day she said, “You too, sweetheart” and hung up.

Ooooooookay…let’s recap:

Originally she called to scream at me, accuse me of prank-calling her and call me a liar when I denied it, and she left 2 voicemails calling me a bitch and saying she’d reported “me” to the state AG. This time she was polite, willing to listen and (apparently) believe me when I told her that I wasn’t the person calling her, and that was that. Oh, and apparently she hadn’t contacted the AG’s office yet, despite what she’d said 2 weekends ago.

I can think of a few reasons why this occurred, but as I am not any sort of therapist or substance abuse professional (either for use or treatment) I won’t list the possibilities; I’m sure y’all can come up with them on your own.

If she calls again, and if she’s nice again, I will have to try very hard not to say, “You know, I think I liked you better when you were screaming at me…it made for better press.”

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This past weekend I went to Victoria to check out the British Museum traveling exhibit and on Saturday, while I was enjoying some ice cream (peanut butter chocolate), my cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number, an 816 area code, but I decided to answer it anyway because it was a sunny day, I was in a good mood and I figured I might be able to have some fun with a telemarketer.

Alas, this was not to be.

The woman on the other end asked me why I kept calling her and hanging up; I replied that I had not been calling her (I hadn’t) and that, despite what her call display was telling her, she was mistaken. After trying to point out that technology isn’t infallible, she called me a liar and hung up on me, so I shrugged and wrote it off as one of those strange things that happen.

Then my phone rang again…same person. I let it go to voicemail.

A few minutes later, another call from her…again, I let it go to voicemail.

I listened to the messages later; the first one was a threat to go to the Missouri Attorney General on Monday to report my harassment and ended with her calling me “Bitch.” The second message was to tell me that she’d contacted the Missouri AG (Hey, Missouri residents, congratulations on having state officials that work weekends) and reported me, and that I’d better have deep pockets because I was gonna be paying a lot of money in damages. She signed off again with “Bitch.”

After those two calls I didn’t hear back from Crazy Missouri Woman (hereafter referred to as CMW) until testerday afternoon, when she called me again. I let the call go to voicemail again but this time, instead of ranting at me, she hung up without saying a word.

Ooooh, psychological warfare! You know, I was really hurt that I didn’t get called “Bitch” again. Where did I go wrong?

She then called a second time, this time without leaving any message at all.

Great, I have a groupie. Not only that, I have a stupid groupie. Okay, from now on I’m going to refer to this particular sort of person as a “stoupie.”

This isn’t my first brush with stoupies; some months ago I was getting calls from a woman (different state - sorry, Missouri, you don’t have the market on stoupies) who was insisting that I either had someone else’s phone or I was the person she wanted to talk to and just wouldn’t admit it…she was somewhat incoherent so I couldn’t be 100% sure which it was. I ended up creating a special contact in my address book for that particular number and assigning it a special ringtone so I’d know when she was calling but of course, after I did that, she stopped. After the Monday calls, I added CMW’s number to that contact so I’d know when she decides, if ever, to bother me again.

To commemorate this moment in my life, and in the spirit of Canadian Content, I have decided to adapt a classic rock ditty to suit my particular situation:

MISSOURI WOMAN (with apologies to The Guess Who)

Missouri Woman
Stop calling me
Missouri Woman
This is just crazy

Hey woman
What’s with the attack
Missouri Woman
Do ya need Prozac?

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