I saw a rabbit on my way home from work today. I hadn't seen one in far too long. The last rabbits I'd seen were in Wollongong, and in some way those didn't quite count. They were all descended from domestic rabbits, so they were a variety of colors -- black and white and spotted, and far too large. But this was a real wild cottontail, with its head tall and flat from side to side and little ears and a sort of bipolar nervousness around people. I stopped on the Persson steps to watch it, frozen against the little patch of woods that runs behind Little. And I wondered, "ok, now what do I do?" I would have been conent to just stand and watch it, except that part of my brain kept reminding me that I had to get home and read Claude Levi-Strauss, which made it harder to rationalize when I wasn't doing something.

So I went for the old standby of trying to sneak up on it. Except that I wasn't thinking of it as sneaking up on it, the way I always used to when we had rabbits in our yard in Tionesta. I was just trying to get close to it. Not to catch it, since I wouldn't know what to do with it if I did.

Eventually it ran away, which may have been better for it as it wouldn't be stressed and nervous about being in the presence of a cunicuvorous person. Then I walked away, and I felt really peaceful. Even though I hadn't necessarily done the right thing, I still felt like there had been something special there. I saw a rabbit.