JOY ALONG THE WAY: TANGLED LIKE TAR-BABY IN A HEDGEROW

"You got ter get outer heah and see what's goin' on in de thicket," I sez to myself, sezee I, reverting to my Uncle Remus dialect in order to lift the day out of wintertime Slough of Mediocrity.

I wonder," continues I, "'spose we have a mild winter, will dat make spring no less trillin'?"

Donning my fury cap and struggling into my rabbit coat (it's mock raccoon, old, and getting a little tight), I went forth to the thicket, ordinarily known as the hedgerow, but today was to be up and out of the ordinary.

Halfway down the thicket-hedgerow Brer Rabbit hopped out in front of me. "Good Mawin'," sez I. Brer Rabbit ain't sayin' nothin'.

"But," I sez aloud to myself, sezee I, "Brer Rabbit's got ter have a winter home in there." Then, thinking I hadn't seen a rabbit's winter home in a long time, I had an overwhelming desire to find it and see just what kind of thistledown, milkweed floss and other fuzzy stuff he had been able to accumulate.

I pushed aside the thick briars of the old fence row multiflora roses and leaned in. Stooped down. Didn't see anything. Pressed aside some stickery barberry that was once a fence hedge, clean and trimmed but now grown wild along with a thousand other things. Went forward a few stooped-down steps. I felt something closing in behind me. It was the thorny rose canes. They clung tenaciously to my rabbit-raccoon coat.

I parted a few more vines and inched forward. These vines didn't have thorns. I got the sinking feeling they were poison oak I saw growing along there last summer. Too late now if they so be. I went along, half sitting down, like a Russian folk dancer. In fact, I couldn't stand upright now for the roses and barberry and wild grae vines and possibly poison oak had closed like a Venus's-flytrap above me.

Ever try to turn around, half sitting like a Russian folk dancer, in a fur coat, in a bramble of barberry stickers and thorny roses with knees past the felicitous manner of rising? And, look, here was something else. Spanish needles. They were aching to be transferred to another location to help populate the Spanish Needle world.

My furry cap was far above me now, resting in the embrace of the multiflora rose bushes. Multiflora rose bushes? Hadn't I read they were bull proof?

"You done got yoself 'tached to a Tar-Baby," I sez, seez I. I tried to think of how Brer Rabbit had pried himself loose from the Tar-Baby, but my recollection powers were as tangled as my arms, legs, torso, hair and emotions. I smelled blood, too. I forgot all about Brer Rabbit's winter home. The idea was to get out of there intact.

"Now what I'll have to do is get down low and practically crawl out of here," I said, in my sane, no-nonsense Midwestern voice, rich with logic and determination, forgetting all about Uncle Remus.

Practically crawling out, my face close to the ground, I saw a dandelion -- in bloom. The old thrill of spring's coming was alive and well.

Back home, straggled and draggled and bloody, too, I hastened to find the Uncle Remus book and re-read how Brer Rabbit had loosened himself from the Tar-Baby. He didn't. Uncle Remus left him there, stuck-up, offering only that there was a rumor, "Some say Jedge B'ar came 'long en loosed im -- some say he didn't."

There is some sort of little moral to my adventure, just as Uncle Remus' stories sometimes have a moral. I had no more business disturbing Brer Rabbit's winter home than he did mine.

But it wasn't a mundane day. There was the dandelion, and I got out by myself without any, possibly inquisitive, Brer Passerby coming to loosen me.

REJOICE!