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"Carole, do you know anyone who's missing a big white rabbit?" My neighbor Connie was at the other end of the phone. "Harvey? You've
got Harvey the rabbit?" I asked, with visions of James Stewart flashing through my mind. "No. Not that big, but, well, it is a big white rabbit -- the floppy-eared kind. Just like…I really hate to say this…but
it's just like the Easter Bunny." "I'll be right down," I said, hanging up the telephone. I grabbed a cat carrier so that we could put the rabbit in it, providing we caught it, and hiked the few houses down to
Connie's. She came to the door to let me in and we walked though her house to the backyard where she – and her two outside cats – had been observing the bunny. It was gone.
"It was here. I swear it was," Connie said. She was in her stocking feet. "See?" She stuck her foot out. "I didn't even put on shoes. I just stood here and watched it. It must have taken off when I went to
let you in." We searched fruitlessly through her wooded backyard – or as far as we could go, anyway – before heading back to the front yard. We heard a cat meow from a neighbor's yard and, since I've been trying
to recapture a wild, deaf cat I own (who is also white), we decided to go over there and look for both the cat and Peter Cottontail. We were skulking around in the neighbor's backyard when he drove up. "Hi,
Bill," Connie said. "We're looking for a cat and a white rabbit." Bill's eyebrows rose a bit. He allowed at how he'd seen my cat but the bunny part made him shake his head. "I just drink Diet Pepsi," Connie
said as we climbed back through the hedges to her house. "Diet Pepsi. That's it, I swear it." "I believe you, Connie," I said. "Really I do. Well, if you should see the rabbit, maybe you can put it in the
carrier." I handed it to her. She looked a bit taken aback at the idea. "Uh, how do you pick up a rabbit? " Connie asked. "By their ears?" I had a mental picture of Connie yanking a gigantic rabbit up by its
ears. "I don't think that's a really good idea. They have teeth, you know?" "I hadn't thought about teeth." "Maybe you should just see if he'll let you pet him before you try picking him up," I
suggested, glad the rabbit was hanging around on her end of the street. I slogged my way home leaving poor Connie standing uncertainly in her yard with an empty carrier and Jumbo the Wonder Bunny hopping around
somewhere. Later I filled in another
neighbor who has been trying to help me catch my deaf kitty on the rabbit connection. She said she'd keep an eye out for Rabbit-zilla. The next evening, she called me back. "The big white rabbit was in our
yard," Sue said. She recounted how she and her husband were heading out in the car when they saw two white shapes next to one another in their front yard. It took a moment, but it finally registered: it was the white
rabbit and my deaf kitty. And they were lounging around as though they were old buddies. Sue's husband stopped the car, climbed out and headed for the pair, whereupon, according to Sue, the rabbit calmly hopped
away, while my kitty also put some distance between her and husband. "It was very obvious these two are buddies," Sue said, referring to my cat, Rocky, and Bunny Kong. We've been trying to trap my kitty
for several weeks, but she's been in a trap before and is smart…really smart. She won't buy it, so she's still out there. As far as the rabbit goes, well, that's anybody's guess. We keep seeing the pink-eyed cottontail,
but it just hops right on past us, paying little attention to the people who keep trying to lure it into a carrier or cage. It's a pretty smart bunny and I, for one, have to wonder at the coincidence of it turning up
right at this time of the year. I mean what are the odds? Uh – just curious, you realize, but has anybody heard from the Easter Bunny lately? |
