Rising Tensions At The Forbidden Zone

“Good, you’re here,” said our pet rabbit as I got downstairs in the morning, so I was suspicious. “Because the amaryllis is making trouble.”

I was skeptical. After a somewhat roudy youth, the amaryllis had settled down to a reasonable maturity, taking up a good part of the living room and holding web interviews in which it rages about other cities’ bike-sharing programs. The plant’s crazy, but a well-behaved, faintly amusing kind of crazy.

“Seriously! I overheard it planning to break through the window and grab the neighbor’s car.” A previous owner sealed the dining room window shut, we suspect by vacuum-welding it. There’s one pane sealed so tight that light can’t get through.

The rabbit rattled his cage bars. “Just let me at it a couple minutes, I can get it under control!”

“I’ll consider it,” I said. If the amaryllis is able to get the window in the dining room to open I might just pay it for the carpentry work.

But I could swear the plant cackled.