Poor Burtie, still patiently waiting for spring even though he thought it was here to stay a week and a half ago when it warmed up and the calendar said it was official. Now it's cold and snowing - again. Ugh, what a mess, but we can't let that get us down because there are signs of spring everywhere else. Who knows, tomorrow it might be warm again, ha!
Now that spring is starting to show up, so are the casualties winter and it's time to get to work on the repairs. There's always something and this year it was Elwood, our trumpeter bunny/fountain.
This bad photo of him actually working was taken through the patio screens last summer. A decade or more ago, I stopped by a flower shop (because one of my son's friends had just started working there) and left with this rabbit playing a horn. I didn't have a clue what to do with him but he was way too unusual to leave behind.
We called him Elwood after one of the Blues Brothers in the 80's movie by the same name, and it stuck. With a cheap pond pump and some black hose shoved between his ears, he was turned into a fountain in the worst looking way possible. However, apart from the awkwardness of it all, the water sprayed beautifully from his horn and it made a wonderful sound splashing down on the rocks. He's been attracting all sorts of wildlife to himself ever since and we have enjoyed watching the show!
Like most towns, there is no shortage of critters in ours. Around our home the squirrels nest in the pines, a family of chipmunks live under the front steps and bunnies pop out of burrows in the herbs and under the crabapple. Sometimes I wonder if our backyard might not be one huge rabbit warren. They usually cause only minor damage and that's worth putting up with for their entertainment value. Except for the mother raccoon that give birth to five babies in the upstairs of our garage. It took three days and cost us a small fortune to have them humanely trapped and relocated to a state park twenty miles away. I hope they don't find their way back but the babies were really, really cute.
Now however, we have to deal with a very serious problem.
Replacing the whole pond with a fancy, tiered fountain came to mind but once we imagined what the squirrels and raccoons would do to it, that idea was quickly abandoned. There was a spitter fountain in the shape of a gargoyle that seemed like a possibility but it probably wouldn't sound so great. Eventually we realized that Elwood greatest quality is the ability to attract wildlife. If he was replaced with something else, we could lose that. It's the sound of running water that attracts them so it's also important that it's easy enough for them to get a a drink - without falling in! The chickadees are some of his biggest fans. They're always sitting on his head and inside the armillary but what they seem to love the most is flying through the spray of water!
A search for a replacement turned up a photo on Pinterest but no other musical bunnies. The only option left was a bad repair job! As it turned out, he was attached to the armillary by just two small screws and one had broken off. The remaining one was probably too weak to hold a bunny and an armillary together on his own so we opted for another Frankenstein-ish adaptation.
In the end it was up to Doctor Madness to repair the damage.
Now, Elwood has an unattractive hose clamp to go along with the black plastic hose.
Well . . . he's fixed for now. How long will he last is anyone's guess.
It's easy to forget what things actually look like in the middle of summer. When the finches and hummingbirds come back to join the cardinals, chickadees and all those sparrows at his pond, they probably won't even notice the difference . . . if he is still standing!
Thanks for stopping by!
