Rabbit Habit

Rabbit for Rabbit HabitThink About It. Rabbit Habit. The Weaver children all seemed to have alternate names bestowed mostly by their father.  Sometimes Moose, Mouse, Farnsworth,  Sherb and the eldest, Bunny. There were more (not children, nicknames).  Let’s pick and pick on Bunny today.  Although now one of the great examples of positive womanhood, she readily admits long since, losing her membership in the ingénue club. Also true of her quite adult Holland lop, not to be confused with Welsh rabbit, the cheese on toast variety, sometimes called Welsh rarebit (a specious “folk etymology”).

The whole subject came up when rabbits in the swamp across the street suddenly disappeared from our view. Their presence had been a pleasant and much anticipated experience at dawn and twilight. They are corpuscular you know. (Please at least crack a grin.)  While the does do the work, the big bucks come out of hiding long enough to feign monitoring the kits.  They of course crawl and eventually perfect hopping here and there with dangerous abandon. Meanwhile hundreds of male redwing blackbirds perch high on the cattails when they can’t find enough bush tops to share, loudly bragging of their crimson-colored wing patches.  When frightened, they hide their patch along with their pride and join the less colorful females already busy building nests low in the bush.

Blackbirds are known to challenge predators like larger birds, but our local rabbits suddenly disappeared when a hawk began to make regular visits, inscribing slow circles across the pond and marshy vegetation, in search of neighborhood rodents or the regularly born young of our long-eared friends. Occasionally a speedy descent either frightened or diminished the animal population. While I bemoaned missing the pleasure of having the company of the gentle beasts, especially in the morning when I went out to retrieve the papers, Mary had already sensed the “silence of the birds” no longer here.

But now the mystery. Where have the rabbits and redwing blackbirds gone?  We had reckoned at least five colonies around the several acres of what the community developer fondly calls by its PC name, “wetlands”.  Of course the area is named Prairie Lakes which nobody has explained.  Perhaps this was once a prairie, but we haven’t been able to find the lakes. The hawk is gone with no prey in sight, but where has our entertainment gone?  None of my extensive research has given a clue. With a nearly 360 degree range of vision to use for overhead scanning, our heroes must know the hawks are gone.  Or are they also hiding, only to return to their insidious activity?

There’s no time to talk of the urban legend Rabbit Test for pregnancy or rabbit’s foot for good luck.  It certainly proved unfortunate for the footless one who sadly only had four toes in the first place.

If you look up Bunny on Wikipedia, you’ll find yourself redirected to a site where you can learn even more about the Rabbit Habit. Think About It.

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