Rabbit-sized Resistance
There is an orphaned wild bunny, possibly two, that live under the huckleberry bush behind my patio. This sounds like the start to a children’s story, but it is the fact of this summer.
There is an orphaned wild bunny (possibly two) that lives under the huckleberry bush behind my patio.
There are a lot of animals that make the thicket behind my place their home: the spotted towhees raise fledgelings each spring, and Mr. and Mrs. Dark-Eyed Junco are regular visitors to the patio through the year. The occasional hummingbird will buzz through, asking if we have a teaspoon of nectar they can borrow. The squirrels tease my cats in the window, to everyone’s delight except the cats’. One of the robin families serenades me late into the evening, seeming not to mind the darkness, seeming not to mind that theirs are the only voices questing into the gloaming.
I know my human neighbors well enough; living in an apartment complex in the city means it’s best to be on good terms with those around you.
I know my non-human neighbors much better. Perhaps it’s because they don’t ask me how I’m doing.
The rabbit known as Notch-Ear, so called for a split in one of her long ears, was a secretive member of the community. I saw her mostly during the fall mornings, when she would come out to graze. Though the hill behind my unit is dense with brambles, ferns, salal, and other thick greenery, the surrounding area is dangerous for a rabbit: cats roam night and day, and the road at the bottom of the hill is busy. There are dogs and hawks and owls and plenty of other hungry things to worry about when you’re small and prone to freezing. So I didn’t let myself become attached to Notch-Ear.
I didn’t know she was a mother.
I didn’t know she was a mother until after her children were orphans.
I had been sitting on the patio, chatting with a close friend while she smoked. The evening had passed and it was fully night when we saw the little shadow move. “What was that?” we asked each other, and strained to see in the mostly-dark. It moved again, and we could make out the shape of a tiny rabbit, small enough to fit in the cup of my hand.
”Where is your mama?” my friend cooed at the bunny. “You’re too little to be out here by yourself.”
Mama, who was Notch-Ear, had already lost her tussle with a predator. She was rotting down the hill by the road, as I discovered a few days later.
The baby rabbit didn’t seem to be afraid of us; whether too young to know better or too desperate to care is hard to say. It set about grazing with an audience of myself, my friend, and the stars.
For several weeks, my roommate and I were on Bun Watch, constantly keeping an eye out for the baby that would periodically emerge to graze. There is a distinct white stripe on his head that is sometimes very visible and other times so hidden it seems to have disappeared, which is why I think there may be a sibling.
I reorganized my patio garden to include a small bowl of fresh water. I put a belled collar on my cat in case he slips outside, which he does from time to time. I spent hours on the patio each week, just waiting, watching, ensuring Baby Bun had lived another day.
I often wonder about what community means. I spent the spring season hiking through prairies, counting butterflies, and learned about the connections between the plants, the pollinators, and the people, how one does not exist without the others. I think of my friends, and how our group has changed and fractured and healed over the last year. I think of the town I live in, the ways in which my neighbors are safe or unsafe, the ways we keep each other safe.
“Community” comes from the French root “comunete” which stems from the Latin “comunis”. Loosely, it means “a group.” What holds that group together is the refining factor of the definition, be it location, interest, social class, or something else.
Pride month wrapped up a few days ago. The Queer community is one I feel supported in and represented in, but it’s hard to celebrate in the current climate. When people are being whisked off the streets by masked men in vans solely because of their skin color; when people in power celebrate the opening of a concentration camp that amounts to cages in the swamps during hurricane season; when every “How are you doing?” comes with an implied “… aside from everything?”; when one of my closest friends discusses fleeing to a country where she can get her hormones; when the disabled woman I care for is too ill to work but insurance won’t cover the care she needs because of her work history… it’s not a celebratory mood.
But it does remind me of how Pride month celebrations began: by ordinary people, persecuted, who said, “We are all we have, and we will fight to protect one another.”
It feels silly to say I have a community with a wild rabbit. But it’s equally as silly to say that the lesbian couple in the next building, whose names I don’t know, are part of my community. It is equally as true.
In my lower moments, I sometimes imagine what Mama Notch-Ear might have said to her babies in that secret language of rabbits. Deep in the warren, while the spring rains drummed on the leaves above, did she tell them to look out for each other? Did she say that the towhees and juncos were good neighbors, to listen to the jays when they call out alarms?
Did she tell her babies that their community is those who look out for them?
Broadly speaking, I can’t do much to take care of the vulnerable people in my community. I’m neither wealthy enough nor politically powerful enough to be of much use. But I can take out the trash for my wheelchair-bound neighbors. I can act as a buffer for my trans friend when she’s afraid to go somewhere alone. I can disrupt call centers for reporting “illegal” immigrants.
Shortly after I first saw Baby Bun, as he’s been affectionately termed, I promised I would take care of him as best as I could. I can’t teach him to be afraid of hawks, or to avoid the roads and dogs. But I can shoo away the cats. I can leave out fresh water.
We are all we have.
I love this