It was about the cutest thing I’d seen in a month of Saturdays—a baby rabbit. It was no bigger than my fist and it was looking lost on the sidewalk. The front “lawn” of the next neighbor’s house is paved and there’s only a wide street in the opposite direction. Our front lawn has a retaining wall well about the jumping height of the little guy. I didn’t want it dashing into the street, so I circled around from that direction, but the poor thing couldn’t get high enough to reach our lawn. It was young enough not to be certain something at least twenty-five times its size meant it harm. It allowed me to get close enough to scoop it up and put it on our lawn. It immediately leapt away and sheltered under a bush, before eventually disappearing down a hole that I hoped might be its home.
Besides being a hope-filled chance encounter with the wonder of nature, the incident also caused me to ponder what that leporine brain made of this learning experience. For human brains, any sufficiently large animal is a monster, and anything even larger is a god. While there are some bad folks out there, people don’t seem evil to me. And although we’re certainly not gods, I wonder what that little rabbit thought. What I was attempting was an act of kindness. I’m sure it scared the timid tyke—I can imagine being lifted by an enormous creature that I can’t understand and it is a most frightening prospect. But what if that monster were to set me down just where I needed to be? Might not my assumptions about it change?
We don’t know what other animals think, yet it’s clear that they do. Our yard has a fence and we have no dogs, so rabbits tend to like it here. I often mutter softly and try to avoid direct eye contact and sometimes they let me get fairly close. I like to think some of the larger ones recognize me, and maybe can tell that a vegan has nothing but their goodwill in mind. We like to think this about God. Larger, easily able to harm us, but that somehow being divine also conveys good will. The bunny incident cast a pleasant glow over the rest of an otherwise anxious day. It had calmed me and conveyed a sense of appreciation for just how helpful the world of nature can be. I hope for some tiny rabbits in your life too.
