Apr

9

Keep Quite Still And Wait.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

April 9, 2008 |

A couple of days ago my dogs found a nest of baby rabbits. It seems dumb for the rabbits to keep making nests and having babies inside our fenced-in yard, but, for once, they had picked a fairly good spot. It was next was next to a wood privacy fence that extends out from the back of the house. Farther away from the house and they’d be too exposed. If they put their nests outside the fence, in the back, they’d be vulnerable to the coyotes that roam the woods back there. If they put their nests in the front yard they’d have to deal with the neighborhood cats. Since I have dogs, though, the spot they picked wasn’t any better.

The dogs had found rabbits’ nests before and had made it easy for me–before I knew what was happening they’d dug up the nests and killed the babies. All I had to do was dispose of the bodies. This time was different. I chased the dogs away and found three squirming little bodies in the hole. Once the dogs had found the nest there was only one thing to do. It was an easy decision, but hard to carry out. I couldn’t leave them because the dogs would finish them off, and I couldn’t move them because the mother–if she was even still alive–would never find them. This wasn’t like killing squirrels in my attic, which wasn’t easy either but was easier than this. With a surgical glove on one hand I plucked them out and put them in a bag. I took a heavy wrench from the tool box and tried not to lose my nerve; for their sake and mine I wanted to be mercifully quick.

At times like this words fail me; I retreat into the words of others because I feel unworthy. Since they were rabbits the first thing I thought of was this poem by Philip Larkin, about a very different encounter with a rabbit:

Myxomatosis

Caught in the center of a soundless field
While hot inexplicable hours go by
What trap is this? Where were its teeth concealed?
You seem to ask.
I make a sharp reply,
Then clean my stick. I’m glad I can’t explain
Just in what jaws you were to suppurate:
You may have thought things would come right again
If you could only keep quite still and wait.

Sick of death, hating myself for what I’d done, hating the stupid rabbits for building their nests in my yard as if they had any other choice, wishing both the dogs and I could somehow overcome our instincts, wishing that one of the earliest signs of spring in my yard didn’t have to be like this, I also thought of a Gerald Stern poem:

Behaving Like A Jew

When I got there the dead opossum looked like
an enormous baby sleeping on the road.
It took me only a few seconds – just
seeing him there – with the hole in his back
and the wind blowing through his hair
to get back again into my animal sorrow.
I am sick of the country, the bloodstained
bumpers, the stiff hairs sticking out of the grilles,
the slimy highways, the heavy birds
refusing to move;
I am sick of the spirit of Lindbergh over everything,
that joy in death, that philosophical
understanding of carnage, that
concentration on the species.
— I am going to be unappeased at the opossum’s death.
I am going to behave like a Jew
and touch his face, and stare into his eyes,
and pull him off the road.
I am not going to stand in a wet ditch

with the Toyotas and the Chevies passing over me
at sixty miles an hour
and praise the beauty and the balance
and lose myself in the immortal lifestream
when my hands are still a little shaky
from his stiffness and his bulk
and my eyes are still weak and misty
from his round belly and his curved fingers
and his black whiskers and his little dancing feet.


Comments

2 Comments so far

  1. Movie_Maven on April 12, 2008 9:11 pm

    I’m not sure if I should feel guilty for thinking about ‘Watership Down’ when I read your blog or my new .22 Remington 597 rifle I just got for rabbit hunting.

  2. James on April 15, 2008 4:16 pm

    I remember an occasion a group I was with in a forest found a couple of rabbits with a disease that was spreading at the time and we also had to the the merciful thing as you say. Books are rife with situations where the lesser of two evils must be taken rather than let the majority die. In the recently reviewed “Chickenhawk” we are told about army truck driving training, and how this was remembered by the main character when he had to make a similar call with his helicopter. It doesn’t make anyone feel better, and does leave for some/most a bad feeling for a long time. But understanding it was for the best for the majority or even for the victim is really key.

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