“Oh, my goodness, look at you little fella,” I heard Christine say with delight, from the other side of the deck covered in 33 inches of snow.
Many years ago, on a cold, late October morning, my dad pulled into the yard of a hunting buddy who would be going goose hunting with us. Peering through the windshield from the back seat of the old Chevy wagon, I saw the buddy, shotgun in hand, struggle down the front steps, and limp his way to the car.
“What happened to you,” Dad asked.
“Oh, she stabbed me with a fork again,” he laughed, “The woman has a fondness for sharp objects.”
“You deserve it?”
“Yep.”
Dad’s buddy turned to me and said, “Just so you know, young fella, when you get them mad enough to stab you, you know for sure they love you.”
Those memories ran through my mind as Christine and I, for the third straight day, like many others in Southcentral Alaska, shoveled snow at 3 a.m.
Early in the storm, while plowing our yard in an attempt to keep up with it, a hydraulic line ruptured on our plow truck. Having no spare line and knowing the chances of getting one were slim or none, even if we could get to town, and that it would be days before anyone with a snowplow would have time for any extra work, we began shoveling.
For two days the reward of working with one’s hands and standing back to see what you’ve done kept our spirits high. On day three, with more snow falling and still marooned in place, things weren’t quite so rosy.
Our conversations took on a bit of self-pity. When we realized how ridiculous it was to compare our situation to folks who are homebound for weeks at a time in other remote places, we had a good laugh. We might call it cabin fever, but by any real definition, it was anything but.
Funny how folks will compare the circumstances of others, those whose situation is much worse than their own, and feel silly for it — for a minute. So, by the morning of day three, as we trudged out to a deck that we keep shoveled all winter, we barely spoke.
Fifteen minutes into the job, we grunted at each other. A brief conversation ensued concerning how the snow depth would affect moose, and other wildlife, the sadness of thinking about that no help.
I was thinking to myself that we were getting precipitously close to that point where keeping ourselves separated might be a good idea lest we began thrusting at each other with our snow shovels.
And then Rascal bounced into the morning.
In August, two rabbits showed up at our place. The first to arrive was a gold-colored rabbit we recognized from seeing it at a place a half-mile away. The previous eight months another bunny, a near- black version, seemed to be joined at the hip to the gold one. Odd, we thought that the gold one was alone.
When the gold rabbit stayed, despite seven dogs barking, we named it Bugsy and thought, given how attractive it was, that it must be a girl. After a few days, the black one showed up, and they became a pair, and the black one, thinking it was a boy, we named Rascal.
The pair hopped around the yard, tormenting the dogs, although it seemed they enjoyed each other. Rigby had met them while we took walks the winter before and delighted in chasing them. The bunnies seemed fine with the game, and Rigby had no chance of catching them, a sprinter he ain’t. Winchester and Hugo would point them through the fence, Colt wanted to play with them, and Boss, Cogswell, and Purdey would bark at them, as if they expected some reciprocal conversation.
Every morning, when I went out to the shop, there they would be, eating grass and whatever flowers they could find, and bringing a smile to my face.
Then early one morning, a great grey owl snatched Bugsy. Rascal milled around the yard for a few days, and then one morning, he was gone. We thought he went looking for Bugsy, and hoped he would return when he didn’t find her. A couple of months went by without seeing him, and we thought he must have adopted someone else.
About three weeks ago, the pack barked most of the night, which normally means a moose had visited. A couple of inches of snow had fallen during that night, and when I went out, there were rabbit tracks all over.
We have a few snowshoe hares around our place, but they keep to the brush around the periphery of the property. These tracks went all over, as if the critter was searching for something. When I told Christine, she said what I was thinking, “Rascal is back.”
He didn’t show himself for a few days, but then one morning, there he was, sitting in the yard as if he had never left. I grabbed a carrot out of the fridge and when I went back out, he ran over and grabbed it from my hand — something he had never done when he was there before.
A bale of hay and straw gave him material to make a nest where he wanted. He did, under a low storage shelf next to the shop. He quickly became part of my morning ritual. Take a carrot out in the dark, hold my hand at the entrance to his lair, and when I feel his soft nose, he gets the carrot.
It is right up there with Rigby shaking his butt every morning when he sees his people, just happy to be with us.
Rascal is clearly a domestic rabbit that went somewhat feral. We aren’t trying to make him domestic again, just hoping he’ll stay for a good long time, and if he moves on, we’ll wish him well.
That’s how Christine came to the utterance that opened this story. And, at that moment, Rascal bounding up the ramp to the deck, to say hi, saved us from ourselves. As animals have done so many times in our lives.
Much as I enjoy listening to country singer Cody Johnson and his song, “Human,” where he is trying to learn to be human, I wonder if it misses the mark. Maybe we ought to quit trying so hard and, like Rascal, just be who we are. Maybe then we would bring that sort of delight to others that being free of the stresses of being human, particularly during the holidays, can bring.