A Dying Rabbit, Retirement, and the Lack of Free Beer

Yesterday, a yellow rabbit lay near death under our front bushes. He was stretched out on his side, his front and back legs extended like he’d fallen over in mid leap. He looked more like a pelt than an animal. But, just when I thought he was dead, his rear legs would give a shudder, his shoulder twitch, but he never lifted his head and he made no sound.

I called my husband to look. We right away surmised that a neighbor’s campaign to rid his yard of rats proved fatal for this rabbit. Just days ago, our neighbor stood in our shared driveway and warned us at length not to let our dogs run loose because he’d put rat poison out. The rabbit looked like a creature would look if it had been poisoned.

I decided against trying to minister to the rabbit in any way. He seemed way too far gone to take to a vet. If I’d been raised on a farm, I thought, I’d take a hammer to his head. But no, I saw no options. I decided to let the rabbit die under the bush. That was perhaps cowardly but it is the truth.

Then, in the middle of the night, our big dog, Swirl, rose from his bed in our room and paced back and forth from the door to the window and back again, worried, patrolling. “He’s upset,” my husband said, “but I don’t know why.”

This morning we learned why.

The rabbit had been moved from under thick branches to a clearing near the porch. Part of his head had been eaten by another creature – a coyote, a fox, maybe a raccoon. I know this from my husband’s description because I refused to go look. “You can either shovel him up or hold the bag, you pick.” He says this despite knowing that dead rabbit removal, like many other horrible tasks, fall in his column.

Later, driving, I asked my husband if he thought the episode with the rabbit was an omen.

“Maybe,” he said because he never puts a rosy tint on anything. “There are predators out there.”

“Do you think there are predators after us?”

“Maybe,” he said. “We might be prey.” After he said this, I reflected on the week we’d just had, full of turmoil and stress stemming from the volunteer work we are doing.

“I think we made the wrong choice when we retired. We should have a more peaceful life.”

“Maybe,” he said and then reminded me that the beer garden in the park was tapping a special keg for free beer. So, we went to the beer garden but there was no more free beer. We bought two steins of beer and a giant pretzel with cheese and mustard. And then we took a ride through the city in my old Thunderbird with the top down, probably the last time for this season, and the breeze couldn’t have been warmer or more gentle on our faces.