Year of the Rabbit.

About a month ago, on a weekday afternoon, Daughter and I were walking around the neighborhood. Half-listening to her numbingly complete description of a moment of lunch-table drama, my eye caught movement under the bush next to the house we were passing.

Cat, I thought. Black cat, hopping under plant.

I took another step and tried to listen to the Daughter’s endless saga of who sits next to whom. My brain disobediently looped back to the animal.

Cats don’t hop.

I backed up a step and looked under the bush. Something stared back.

Cats also don’t have long floppy ears and chew sticks.

“Look,” I said intelligently to Daughter. “A rabbit!”.

She squealed in delight and flung herself on the ground so as to gaze adoringly at the rabbit. The rabbit, understandably, viewed sudden movement and a loud piercing squeal as something predators do, and took off across the driveway and through an open gate.

Daughter’s jutting lower lip told me that the three block-long monologue about how I had scared away the rabbit (who she was going to pet and adopt and call Bootsy) was going to be loud, heartfelt, and make me yearn for the seating-arrangement story. At that moment, the Fates smiled on me. Hopping through the open gate was another rabbit. This one was a wee little thing, white, with tall ears nearly as long as its body.

“Look,” I noted. “Another rabbit!”

[Linguistic style is saved for times when I’m not trying to keep my child from whining.]

Again, the squealing in delight. Again, the flinging. Again, the darting. This time, however, Daughter didn’t even have time to draw her eyebrows together before yet another rabbit (mid-size, black and white, one straight ear, one lop-ear) appeared from the house next door and headed towards the gate.

She cooed and stalked the third rabbit as I considered this situation. I’m not always the first person to pick up on trends, but seeing three rabbits in two minutes, all of whom seemed to have an awareness of this house and its open back gate, signalled something. I looked at the house. In a neighborhood where lots of people are doing lots of home-improvement, it was one of the few stubbornly clinging to its “Before” status. I walked past the car up on blocks in the driveway and approached the front door wallpapered in pizza delivery cards. I knocked. I rang what appeared to be a broken doorbell. I yodelled a few “Hellooooo?”s. Nothing.

Just as I was turning to leave, three boys slouched toward the house. They all sported the same teenage boy/Emo haircut which leaves, at most, part of your chin and a sliver of ear exposed; I smiled brightly at the hair mushroom nearest me who, being the one holding housekeys, appeared to be living there.

“Hi! Are these your rabbits?” I said, gesturing towards the rabbits, which were being lovingly stalked by Daughter. I noticed three more rabbits had joined the party.

The hair mushroom stood stock still. He was at the magic age where direct questions from adults, especially female adults, dry up the throat and create the inability to answer yes or no questions. I knew this, but he was the closest thing I had to a source of information. I repeated, slowly, gesturing like Vanna White, “ARE. THESE. (Swinging hand gesture to furry doorstops) YOUR. RABBITS.”

His head turned, and the hair split enough so one eye was briefly exposed. He squinted at the unaccustomed light and goggled at the rabbits. His friends stared at the ground. One hummed. A minute passed.

He finally got out, “Yeah.”

I was about to offer to help move them back into their cages when all of sudden, he got chatty.

“We breed rabbits. For pets. Or food. Whatever. Anyway. You can buy a rabbit. For a pet. Or, you know. Food. You want to buy a rabbit?”

I thought this degree of salesmanship was adorable if misguided, considering that four more rabbits had left through the back gate while he was doing his pitch.

“Thanks,” I said gently, trying to herd a couple who were heading down the block, “I’ll certainly think about it. But, in the meanwhile, you might want to…catch them and lock them up?”

The heads of hair looked at one another, to the degree something without eyes can be said to look. Clearly, the afternoon’s plans of sniffing paint and watching “Beverly Hillbillies” re-runs might be compromised by this assignment.

Silence.

The hair mushroom said “Yeah.”

I had no idea what he just agreed to, or with. I’m not sure he did either, but it gave a certain anemic closure to the whole interaction. They went inside, I corralled Daughter and we continued on our walk.

Do I have to tell you how this is playing out?

Already, don’t you instinctively know no one in that house bothered to bring in the rabbits, which means we now have free-range rabbits for blocks around?

Need I explain that the newest nighttime driving hazard in the neighborhood is two rabbits in the middle of the street, frantically making more of themselves?

Would you like to know how the neighborhood dog owners have dislocated shoulders from their leashed dogs leaping like stallions after the rabbit which cunningly waits to bolt out from under a plant until the dog is just close enough to care?

Do you care that the city has told me that even if I were to catch some of them, they don’t have any more room for rabbits in the shelters?

On the plus side, the day before Easter, Daughter and I were going somewhere. Walking through the yard, she spotted something in the plants.

“MOMMY! It’s the EASTER BUNNY!”

Yes, sweetheart. It’s also the other white meat.