Rabbit Redux

I did some posts last week about a dead rabbit—well, part of a dead rabbit (only its head remained)—that I found in our driveway last week. A bit on Facebook. A bit on this blog. I even wrote a wee poem about the experience.

Joyce and I were quite sad about it. I often saw the creature (male? female?) in the early morning when I began my walk over to the coffee shop. Later, we would see him in the back yard—or along the driveway, where, as I said last week, Joyce would have a conversation with her (let’s go with this pronoun for a while). The rabbit never bolted—just listened respectfully (which is exactly what I’ve learned to do the past half-century).

After I found the head and (carefully, carefully, carefully) told Joyce about it, she went out to a garden store and bought a little rabbit thingy to stick in the ground; she buried the head; a bit later we had a little service for her (Joyce said some things; I read the poem aloud).

All of this I’ve reported.

Then … Wednesday evening, back home from our 4:30 appointment to get flu shots, we were prepping for supper in the kitchen.

And Joyce cried, “Look back there!”

I looked back there—in the back yard.  And there, browsing, a rabbit!

“O joy unbounded” (A song in Trial by Jury, in which I appeared at Hiram High School, fall of 1961.) (Link to song.)

Could it be … our rabbit? Was that Driveway Head from some other rabbit? Dropped there, inadvertently, by a trotting fox? A winging owl?

Or is this new one a sibling? An interloper? A multiple life (like a cat)? (Or, perhaps even more likely, a projection of our sorrow!)

We should have done a DNA test, right?

Anyway, Joyce and I moved quietly out onto the back porch (screened and glassed), and I got the pic you see at the bottom of this post. (A pic proves reality, right?)

For the nonce, we have tacitly agreed to consider her “our” rabbit, indeed. And I plan to see her in the mornings; Joyce is thinking about some conversations to have. And we will continue to feel our unbounded joy.