“It Must Be Bunnies (Or Maybe Midgets)”

When we moved into the suburbs, I assumed that Halloween would be the most negative part of living in a child-friendly area. And indeed, one year we were inundated with so many trick-or-treaters that we ran out of candy and a mob of determined children began to form on our lawn. The mob was placated only after my husband made an emergency run to the supermarket and returned with another 100 pieces of candy.

Now that I’ve been in this neighborhood for nearly four years, the weeks leading up to Halloween still strike fear in my heart. But I have learned that something more horrifying, more dangerous, lurks in the suburbs.

Rabbits.

Some of you may remember that a few months ago, Stanley inadvertently killed a nest of baby rabbits. (Even now, I still can’t help but to refer to the shovel as the “dead bunny scooper.”) So I had begun to suspect rabbits were becoming a problem, but rabbits did not surge to the top of my suburbia hatred list until a few weeks ago.

We had just finished a nice walk around the neighborhood with our dogs. As we came back to our house, we took off the dog leashes as usual. Mina likes to conduct a quick surveillance of the house after walks, paying particular attention to the gutters because she once heard a chipmunk in a gutter and has remained suspicious of noises near the gutters since then, even if she has to make the noises herself.

Today, though, Mina decided she wanted to look at the holly bushes in front of our house. She trotted into the bushes and I was yelling at her to come out and into the house, when something leaped out of the bushes, bounced heavily off my shin, and raced away.

I am not ashamed to admit that I screamed.

Chris was in the garage already, taking the harnesses off Paco and Stanley, and he yelled, “What happened? Are you okay?”

I was staring into the distance where a rabbit had rounded the corner of the garage, leaving behind only a flash of the white underside of its tail.

“A rabbit just bounced off me,” I said. “And I can’t get Mina out.” My old fears resurfaced. “What if she’s eating some rabbit babies!?!!”

“Nah, I think it’s too late in the season for babies,” Chris said, in a tone of voice which suggested that no matter what he found, he was going to tell me there were no dead babies in the bushes. Because sometimes a man has to sneak out of the house and quickly dispose of dead things if that means he’ll be able to sleep through the night without his wife waking him up every half hour to ask if bunnies go to heaven.

By now, all we could see of Mina was a faint rustling of the holly branches closest to the ground. Chris walked around the bushes, calling for her. When she ignored him, he pushed his way through the branches and felt around the ground.

After a few minutes, he emerged holding Mina. Mina had a tiny spider hanging off one of her whiskers, and dirt on her back. She also looked startled to have been interrupted in her rabbit-hunting.

We brushed her off and took her inside. She spent the rest of the day perched in the windowsill, alertly surveying the lawn. Maybe it had taken the humans four years to figure out the true dangers of living in the suburbs, but she had known all along about the rabbits.

And also, the squirrels.

Posted by: ssjane | September 9, 2007 | 11:43 pm
Posted in: Dogs | This Life