I am being tormented by a rabbit.  A small gray bunny with a white cottontail. The weather has been beautiful–75 degrees, slight wind, blue skies–and my patio is inviting as a second office. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the rabbit come out of the leafy mass of dogwood bushes, near the back fence. It peeps out to chew on the grass–the section that has already turned brown because the sprinkler head makes a nice arc over that patch and hits ten feet away with a full spray of water.

It irks me.  I have already seen at my mother’s house, a few miles away, resident rabbits have made mincemeat of Mom’s tulips.  They rule both the front yard and back yard, bounding across the asphalt street to terrorize the rest of the neighbors. Small bunnies have victimized my mother–deprived her of the joy of seeing springtime flowers in the yard. Am I next?

What worries me is that the rabbit will discover my vegetable garden, about 100 feet away from its cozy quarters in the bushes. This morning, it hopped halfway toward the patch of lettuce and spinach, staying close to the side fence. I was wondering if I could chase it towards the front gate or pick it up gently and put it in a box, to be released with the prairie dogs in the field across the street.  Then my mind turned to using a broom to beat it to death. Twenty years ago in the Midwest, I watched my stepfather calmly bludgeon a group of gophers in the backyard with a shovel. He is from the old school where it’s either man or animal, but not both. I realize I could not cross the line of killing a rabbit and not see the image of a bloodied rabbit as I drift off to sleep.

I got up from the patio and moved toward it, giving it a good scare.  Rabbits can hop pretty fast when they have to. 

Last week, I hatched a plot to bring the neighbor’s dog over to sniff out the rabbit.  Bodey is a lively dog that squirms in his owner’s arms and chases the four-year old daughter in the backyard until both of them are tired. I tell my husband about my plan and he’s worried that the dog will poop in our backyard.  My neighbor is keen to help but she wonders if Bodey will be fast enough to catch the rabbit. I’m not worried. I just want Bodey to mark my backyard as "unfriendly to rabbits" in the bunny grapevine.  What does cross my mind is that I don’t particularly like dogs and this one might expect someone to be out there playing with him.  I also wonder what Bodey will think about being in our backyard, strange territory, like an alien plopped in the middle of a new planet. Clearly, the dog plan needs some refining. 

Where have all the coyotes gone? I used to hear the coyotes howl in the middle of the night, in the fields across the street. They hung out near a stream that runs through the golf course community that I live in. No more. The natural balance of the food chain has been upset. My neighbors and I headed for bunny hell.