The bunny at my house lives free and uncaged, hippity hopping at will over an acre or more of desert terrain. He is a common cottontail – born in the wild in one of the warrens underneath the juniper cedars in my front yard. I see him every morning in the half-light before dawn and every evening at dusk as he scavenges in the flat sandy areas of my small adobe house front, or sniffing his way around the carried stones of the meditation maze in back. He nibbles with delight at the occasional tossed apple core, yet never turns up his nose at the winter starved rabbit brush, scanty saltbrush, or shadscale.
Today, in the fresh scouring of snow, he ventured completely up on the flagstone porch, whiffling in the cold powder. What did he find there? Some unknown nutrient blown in with the snow?
Some evenings, the bunny arrives while I am playing the piano and he pauses, twitches his ears and looks straight at me through the window glass. I fancy he likes the vibrations stroking his ears. Frequently, the rabbit is a complete distraction to students sitting at my dining room table for tutoring. While a rabbit might lend to research and discussion of mammals, rodents, or the differences between cottontails and jackrabbits; one rabbit does not facilitate a math lesson for nine-year-olds.
There are actually three that I know of. Occasionally, I see two of them sparring over food or territory in the small clearing. One time a third, and smaller, bunny huddled demurely in a clump of ricegrass, intently observing the contenders.
As dusk fell last week, a nine-year-old piano student looked up sharply from the keyboard, “There’s a rabbit!” she exclaimed.
“Yes, that’s my bunny.”
“Can you hold him and pet him?”
“No but I see him every morning and night and sometimes he stops to listen to me play the piano.”
“Can you put him in a cage and bring him inside?”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“To keep him warm. It is cold out there.”
“He has a fur coat and long underground tunnels were he keeps warm. He wants to be out right now.”
When I ponder the bunny in my front yard, some questions cross my mind:
Why would I want to take natural responsibility from the rabbit and smother it with artificial care and provision?
Why do I feel like something or someone belongs to me only if I can control them?
When I cannot control significant people, why do I feel they are no longer mine?
Why is it we want to catch and tame?
Can we not all live free and independent?
In truth, I see this bunny more often than I ever saw bunnies kept in a hutch. This bunny chooses to hop into my field of vision, forage on my doorstep. Bunnies in a cage are often forgotten but for chore time.