Happy Year of the Snake!

Over the weekend, many of the Lao communities celebrated the traditional Lao New Year, 2556, the Year of the Snake, although the full moon does not take place until April 25th, when we will also have Gop Kin Deuane, the frog who eats the moon.

Probably my two favorite things spotted during the new year celebrations was this imaginative rendition of Year of the Snake in Fresno:

And the unusual appearance of a jackalope amid the traditional Southeast Asian spiritual icons in Ceres:

It absolutely has my mind spinning how we might read the jackalope as a Buddhist entity. One normally might expect to find him stopping by the Hare Krishnas, after all. But what would you imagine the Jackalope Sutra or the Jackalope Jataka would discuss?