The other day, Miley and I were looking through old pictures and we came upon this picture…

We both started giggling and Miley looked at me and said, “Mmmoooommmm….” then burst out into full blown laughter. Every time we run onto this picture, it makes us giggle…

One summer evening last year, Miley and I were out doing evening chores. The baby guinea keets were all up by the barn and I’d wanted to get some good pictures of them to share here. So I ran and got the camera and tried taking a few. None of the pictures turned out very well because it was close to dusk so the lighting was off, plus they kept moving. We were getting ready to wrap up chores when Miley turned around and saw a rabbit hopping around nibbling grass close by.

If you didn’t read my post from a while back, last spring we found a litter of cotton tail bunnies in the compost pile…

Isn’t he just so cute? Because their mamma didn’t come back for them, we ended up raising them on goat milk and releasing them when they got old enough.

Miley got excited because she thought that rabbit may have been one of the baby bunnies we raised up. Since I had the camera out there, she decided she wanted to try to get a picture of the rabbit. I told her that the lighting wasn’t good so the picture may not turn out very well. Still, she wanted to try anyway because she was afraid the rabbit may not be out there another time when she’d have the camera.

She’d taken photos to the county fair a few weeks earlier so she was excited to be taking pictures and following suggestions and tips the judges gave her. So in other words, she was taking this seriously. She didn’t want just a snap shot of the rabbit; she wanted a good quality photo.

I handed her the camera and she started snapping pictures. Between having a hard time holding the camera steady as she zoomed in, and the rabbit not holding still, all the pictures were turning out blurry. She started to get frustrated, so I suggested she try sitting down to see if it would help her hold it steady. We both were trying to be as quiet as possible so we wouldn’t scare the rabbit.

As she sat taking pictures, I stood and watched her thinking it wouldn’t take her too much longer. The evening was muggy and hot plus the mosquitoes were thick. As time went on, it became clear that this was going to a while. We were behind the barn, so I sat down in the grass close to the door. One by one, I watched the chickens file into the barn. Aside from the clucking and bickering in the background from the chickens as they situated themselves for the night and the buzzing from mosquitoes, it was quiet.

All of a sudden the silence was broken by the growl of my stomach. We’d had tacos for supper and well… they made me a little gassy. I sat there continuing to watch the chickens and occasionally glanced over at Miley to see how she was coming along. I watched her snap pictures, look at them and continue as she tried to get that perfect photo. The mosquitoes continued to buzz around me so I quietly swatted them away and tried not to move too much.

I started to grow impatient because I was getting really hot. The mosquitoes were driving me crazy. I thought to myself, “If only that dang rabbit would hold still for just 10 seconds, she could get that picture and we could go to the house.”   But.. clearly that wasn’t happening.

Finally I decided enough was enough. I was tired of sitting there so I moved into a more comfortable position and as I did I passed gas. Well, let me rephrase that because “passed gas” doesn’t even begin to describe it. Let’s just say that I ripped one off that would have made the champion of a junior high boy’s farting contest envious. I even jumped a little because it startled me a bit…I just wasn’t expecting it to be that loud.

Next there was complete silence. Even the hens bickering in the barn paused to listen and be on guard.

The first thought that ran through my mind was, “Oh dear, I scared the rabbit away!” Let me tell ya, if I would have scared that rabbit away, I wouldn’t have heard the end of that for a long while.

I quickly glanced over at the rabbit…

and there he was sitting…

completely still, with his ears up listening with caution…

in the most perfect position for a photo.

I thought to myself, “Dang, if that’s all that it would have taken to get that darn rabbit to hold still, I would have done that a long time ago!”

I looked over at Miley and she was peering through the camera… with her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth in full concentration… focusing the camera…

I said to myself, “Yes, she’s got this! Now we can finally go to the house…”

And…just as she pushed the button to take the picture, she giggled, which caused her to move the camera and end up with another blurry picture.

She looked over at me and said, “Mmmoommm….” Then she and I both burst out into full blown laughter.

The rabbit hopped away and she never did get the picture worth a thousand words that she was wanting.

Instead she got…

A Picture worth a thousand giggles…

which is better anyway because giggles are contagious and can turn into laughter which spreads happiness.

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