Rabbit Hunting

 

              

            I went out hoping to catch a rabbit today.

The rabbits emerge every morning and evening, grazing peacefully on what greenery they can find. If they are startled by the slightest noise or unknown presence, they leap away, wide-eyed.  Like the quail I shared about a few weeks ago, they are difficult to photograph. No sooner do you locate one and begin moving closer, then you have startled it- and it has sped away to an unknown hiding place.

Sometimes there are seven or eight rabbits grazing in our front yard. They also enjoy spending time near the wood-pile in the way-back of our property. Humans don’t visit the wood pile very often, especially not when the days grow longer, and that allows the rabbits, chipmunks, and ground squirrels to make their homes in the prolific rounds of dry firewood.

I do not mention the chipmunks or squirrels to my father-in-law. No doubt he is aware of them, but I hate to remind him because I know he will soon enough be at the woodpiles with his rifle. The squirrels especially, are destructive forces. They burrow under our rock walls, eat tree roots, and cause other harm to our property. But it is still hard for me to accept that this is enough reason for their execution. I blame my years of living in the suburbs, and my mother’s animal-loving influence for my impractical attitude.  

      This evening I set out (intentionally leaving my loud and distinctly NOT sneaky children with my husband near the house,) with the camera around my neck, hoping to creep softly enough to snap a decent picture of a rabbit. I should mention that my camera does not have a zoom lens.

There were at least three rabbits near the woodpile, but I struggled to get close enough to take a high-resolution picture, and in the process of tracking them, scared all three away. I sat down on a large boulder and waited. If I waited long enough and sat still long enough, would the rabbits return? Would they perhaps hop softly past me through the low dry grasses and juniper droppings, close enough for a good shot?

I sat very still listening to the early evening noises, the wind playing softly with my hair, and photographed Angel-Wing Mountain, the mountain whose expansive rock out-cropping has always made my mother-in-law think of a guardian angel’s wing, protecting us, surrounding us, watching over us.   

That’s about the time that the hollering destroyed the silence. My 4-year-old daughter was yelling because she could not find me and my 8-year-old son was chasing after her, trying to nag, coerce, and encourage her to return to their father. I sighed. Any hope I had of catching a rabbit was now over. At least I thought so.

My two children found me joyfully, if a little reproachfully (how dare I try and do something without them?) and joined me on the boulder, wondering what I was doing. I told them I was hunting rabbits.

My son looked down the hill. “I saw one on my way up. Just down there.”

This gave me an idea.

“Can you sneak around the other way and scare it in my direction?” I asked.

Maybe, just maybe, we could still catch our rabbit today. I waited on the boulder, camera trained in the direction my son had gone, and within seconds, there came a terrified rabbit, bounding lickety-split up the hill, right in view of my camera lens. The pictures are still not very high resolution, but I was pleased with the outcome, and pleased to have the help of my son.

Together, we caught our rabbit, and the three of us walked back home in the cool evening.