Lucky Rabbit’s Foot

Yesterday, while hiking into a high mountain bowl filled with wildflowers and scattered pine trees, my friend Chris spotted a rabbit’s foot on a patch of open ground.  “Hey,” he said, pointing at the furry foot, “there is a lucky rabbit’s foot.”

Glancing at the rabbit’s foot, I surmised that a predator of some sort had mauled and eaten the rest of the rabbit.

“That foot might be lucky,” I said, “but I don’t think the rest of the rabbit was very lucky.”

According to Wikipedia, a rabbit’s foot is considered a good luck charm in many places around the world and has been considered so for centuries.  In most variations of this superstition, the foot is good luck only if the rabbit is killed in a certain way or killed by a person with specific attributes (such as a cross-eyed man).  In the North American version of this mythology, only the left hind foot of the rabbit is considered lucky.  Additionally, the rabbit must have been captured or shot in a cemetery on a rainy Friday during a full moon.

My standards for luck are not nearly so exacting.  I think not peeing all over the bathroom floor when I get up late in the night is pretty lucky.  And nobody gets hurt.

--Mitchell Hegman