Ya know how often people have an animal or icon of something they identify with for some reason? My (now ex) mother-in-law loves elephants. She just appreciates them for some reason. Their wisdom maybe. Or longevity. (She has both.) So there for awhile before people got the message, everyone was buying her gifts that were either little elephants or had images of elephants on them. You get the picture. It wasn't long before she felt like there were too many elephant representations in her house and had to politely ask everyone to knock it off!
I've had this experience too. My first was with bunnies. I just think they are so darn cute. I started with a picture on the wall of an artful bunny in the snow, progressed to wood bunnies on the shelf--this was in the early 90's and the cornflower blue phase. Minature bunnies in, dare I say it, the miniature shelf cabinet on the wall. A bunny shaped shepards hook outside to hold a plant. Pretty soon, I was being given an art crystal bunny. That was pushing it, I knew. Then we got one of the real things. Thumper. Thumper lived in the backyard and that little bugger was the most unsociable, unaffectionate rabbit there ever was. Still, I did feel bad when something got it. Ick. I had to shield Nina from seeing him, laid out, rigamortus set in. And having never lived on a farm of any kind, I wasn't used to this short lifecycle thing. Picking him up and putting him in the garbage can involved grimaces. (The idea of burying and having a little memorial was out of the question -- what nice thing could we say about a bunny that only ran away from us?) End of my bunny phase.
Quietly I have found myself now attracted to frogs and toads. But don't anybody buy me any!
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