To This Strange End

I asked the internet what the life expectancy of a rabbit in the wild might be. The answer turned out to be a mere 1 or 2 years, though under optimal conditions, a rabbit might reach 3 to 5 years. Granted, rabbits are cute, but they have it pretty rough. They reside near the bottom of the food chain. Where I live, a host of predators have rabbits on the menu: coyotes, foxes, mountain lions, and a variety of raptors. And, of course, they are stalked by disease.

Yesterday, I found a dead rabbit on the concrete apron in front of my garage door. The scene was both jarring and weirdly serene. Though stiff and cold, the rabbit appeared as though sleeping—no blood, not a single hair misplaced, no awkward pose.

Strange.

I was immediately filled with questions. What ended the rabbit’s life? Heart attack? An internal malignancy? Why did the rabbit come to die in that spot?

You can’t leave a rabbit lying dead at the front of your house and expect to carry on in an ordinary fashion. Given this, I gingerly carried the stiffened rabbit out onto the prairie and laid it on the ground amid some sagebrush. One way or another, the rabbit is now provender for something either bigger or smaller.

—Mitchell Hegman