Multiplying

When I first moved into my house almost four years ago, I remember performing one of my perpetual outdoor chores of pulling weeds. I was working on the side yard near the brick of the house when I saw an eyeball staring up at me, flat with the ground, between the tall grass. I looked at it a bit trying to decide what kind of dead animal was attached to it. Although it seemed a little too large, I decided it must have been a bird. I found a still weed stem to use to flip it over before picking it up to dispose of.

As I reached toward it, only a few inches away, I was startled when it jumped up and moved a foot away, toward the street and almost against the wall. It was the tiniest bunny I’ve ever seen, surely smaller than my fist if you took all the fur away, and so cute! It had done exactly as its mother and nature had trained it to do—be perfectly still for its own safety. The brown bunny with a white underbelly and tail had moved only when in imminent danger. The reason I couldn’t identify it before was because it was crouched in a divot in the grass.

Since I didn’t want to scare it into the street, I moved in a wide arc to the street side before I closed the distance between us, and proceeded to shoo it into the back yard for its escape.

A few nights ago I carried some bills to my mailbox. It wasn’t pitch dark, nor were any bright lights shining, but I noticed something between my neighbor’s yard and mine. It was a brown rabbit sitting perfectly still as I walked to and from the street, all the time talking to it, clicking my tongue, and making kissy noises. It never moved. I have seen a single rabbit only three or four other times while out at night, and like to think it’s the same baby I had found a few years back.

It couldn’t possibly be one of the probable seven hundred thirty eight other rabbits that must be frequenting the neighborhood!