Abundance of Caution

I walked out the back door the other morning, and our semi-tame cottontail was there, waiting for some sort of handout. When she saw me come out she raised up on her hind legs, watching me with anticipation but also with a hint of caution. She saw I had something in my hands and watched me pour it out onto the ground. I stepped back and she ventured slowly forward, sniffing cautiously and in sort of zigzag pattern. I used to think she had trouble seeing or smelling, but now I’m convinced it’s a diversionary tactic, like when she runs it’s never in a straight line.


For a moment I think back to some of my mornings at the YMCA. A number of autistic and otherwise challenged kids -- young adults really -- are brought in by caregivers, and given a chance (or sometimes sort of compelled) to get on the treadmill and other machines. One guy, probably around 18, with a goatee and always a ballcap, comes in with his caregiver, but he never walks straight to the machine. He always stops and touches the toe of his right shoe to the floor, working his way there, one touch at a time. He hesitates to step up to the treadmill, making several false starts before climbing aboard. I wonder what his back story is, or what he sees; it all seems so unnecessary to me, but obviously vital to him. Imaginary beings or magic totems, there’s something unseen by us but clear as day to him.


I watch my rabbit as I edge my way around her, in a large half-circle, on my way to the screened back porch. She watches me warily, body tense, ears up and twitching. She stops eating and monitors my every step, sunlight glinting off her deep brown eyes. I can tell she is constantly calculating, checking her exit routes, careful to keep me from getting between her and safety, always figuring the angles and the odds. I go into the porch and sit to watch her. She studies the door where I went in, then goes back to eating.


I wonder if she will ever learn to trust me, and I figure this is about as close as we will get. After all, she has so many enemies who would love to tear her to shreds and eat her still-warm innards, dogs, cats, raccoons, and whatever. Every wild and semi-wild carnivore loves a chance at a rabbit. It’s not a game or ritual to her, it’s survival.


Suddenly she stiffens, then bolts beneath the porch. A large red-tail hawk flaps out from our small cherry tree, swooping down to where the rabbit was, obviously annoyed at missing out on a meal. I wonder how long the hawk was there, watching and anticipating, and what triggered my rabbit friend’s senses. At least now I understand what I found a couple winters back, a ragged rabbit carcass, torn open but not torn up, in the middle of the yard, no animal tracks around it.


And I know why my rabbit friend must always be on guard. Her life literally depends on it, every second.


I sit back smugly in my chair, feeling safe in my world, until a sudden chill descends on me. I wonder what unknown presence, animal or virus or organic or spiritual, is out there, marking my progress, waiting for my guard to be down long enough for it to strike. It’s not a matter of what or who or if, but when. None of us is forever safe, neither rabbits nor people.