Written warnings in instruction manuals are worthless since rabbits can't read.

During late autumn, from somewhere around the end of October until late March early April, Barry hibernated. He hated that time of the year. Barry prided himself with having the best and largest vegetable garden in the entire neighbourhood. Now he sat indoors sometimes with his nose pressed against the window making marks which his wife Gertrude would then have to rub out, she had given up asking and then pleading with himself to stop looking at the light frost which morphed into heavy frost and then finally gave way to snow squalls followed invariably by heavy blizzard like conditions.

Through each of these stages he would watch his pride and joy, the rows of tomatoes and other vegetable plants, go through their various stages of death until they were just brown sticks looking up at the skies for reprieve though none came.

However, as soon as Barry received the first email from one of his two favourite nurseries announcing their upcoming vegetables, some favourites while others something new and fantastical, Barry came to life. The first buds on his crab apple tree, together with calls from the various birds none of them he knew, except for the destructive robins with which he had ongoing wars, brought Barry back to life. He began to shave again. He began to have daily showers again, much to the liking of his family who had to plead with him to or at least wash under his arms pits during the long dark days of winter. He would now go out at first for a couple minutes taking in a couple of deep breaths and then run back indoors until the time came when he spent most of his days and half the nights outside.

Those were the days his family enjoyed the most. They got rid of him. “Ma, why don’t you and dad move to Costa Rica? It’s hot all year round there and then dad can stay outside and never come indoors.”

“Very good idea!” replied Gertrude who had never seriously given any thought to moving out of the neighbourhood they both were born and lived in. Neither of them travelled too far. They never took summer holidays because that would mean taking away for Barry from his wonderful vegetable garden.

“We can go somewhere on vacation during the winter,” he told Gertrude except that when winter arrived, it was too cold to leave the house.

“Maybe I need to call a real estate agent and see what the chances are of buying a house in Costa Rica.”

“Very good! Excellent!” was the answer from Jose the real estate agent in Liberia who told Gertrude when she looked up his number on the internet.

“How did you get his number?” Gertrude junior asked her mother.

“The internet is wonderful,” Gertrude senior replied, “all I did was type in Jose real estate agent in Costa Rica and voila there it was. Did you know there are 25 real estate agents in Costa Rica with the name Jose? I wonder if they ever get their commissions screwed up!” Gertrude junior rolled her eyes and smacked herself for asking a question she knew the answer to which would be something stupid.

“Honey!” Gertrude senior said to her husband on the 1st of November when they sat down to dinner, “honey, let’s move to Costa Rica. Its summer year round and you can have a vegetable garden all year.” Barry at first was excited. The thought of living outdoors day and night all year round was tempting.

“It sounds too good to be true,” he added being the suspicious man he was.

Gertrude junior added her two cents, “and think of it dad, Barry junior and I can come and visit you and mom every other year.” That made him smiled until his brain began to function.

“Where will the two of you live. You’re still in school and judging by the marks you get you may never graduate.”

“Oh, that’s ok dad. We can live with grandma and grandpa. In fact, they been after the two of us to move in with them ever since you stopped showering in the autumn and winter.” Barry senior’s dinner was getting cold so he suggested that everyone slept on it and talked again the next morning.

“You know darling,” Gertrude senior said as she lay in bed waiting for her husband to join her. She tightened her face mask to make sure she didn’t breathe in any of his fumes. “You know darling ever since you’ve been growing vegetables and the rabbits have been digging holes under the fence you wrote warnings in instructions manuals for the rabbits to read and left them by the garden, but you know they are worthless because rabbits don’t read. Well one of things Jose told me,” and here she paused for a second, “I don’t remember which Jose because I talked to so many, but anyway I’m distracting myself. He said that in Costa Rica the rabbits do read. They in fact go to school to learn how to read Spanish and so if you did write warnings in the instruction manuals down there, they would be able to read them and stay away from the kale, mustard greens, lettuce and Swiss chard.”

Barry senior looked excited. “Does that mean that every year I plant them, they will be able to read the warnings in the instruction manuals, and we will actually have food to eat?”

“Yes darling,” replied Gertrude patting his side of the bed, “you will be cultivating a garden for us and not the wildlife.”

“Sold!” shouted Barry loud enough for Gertrude junior and Barry junior to hear him in their room.

“Is it too late to call grandpa and grandma?” one asked the other.

“Nah!” replied the other. “Grandpa stays up late to watch those movies on tv that grandma won’t let him watch during the day when the servants are there.” Barry junior grabbed his mobile phone off the table where it rested at night emitting its comforting blue light and called his grandparents.