To the Rabbit Out This Morning in -14 Wind Chill

Rabbit prints on the driveway

My back can feel the weather before I get out of bed, so I knew when the alarm when off, it was crazy cold. It’s Monday and the week ahead is filled already. I imagine my back feels that, too. I throw the electric blanket off. I hate winter.

I have to wake Indy and let her out. She’s deaf so she never hears me coming. She’s burrowed into her bed, the tip of her nose tucked into the blanket. I don’t want to do this, but I do and she’s shocked. But she follows me into the kitchen. I open the door and we both stop breathing for a second in the cold.

From the front of the yard, a rabbit runs into view. Indy sees it and wants to run, but I hold her back. The neighbors are sleeping.

Granted, you are a big rabbit, but still, all I can feel as I watch you race across the snow is the painful cold and I wonder what the hell you are doing out here. There is nothing growing for you to eat; we’ve left nothing out for you to find. Shouldn’t you be far underground?

Is this a Watership Down situation? Have you been alarmed by some vision? Do you need to warn the others? Are you looking for a safe place to take them? Some place warmer?

Or did you suddenly get brave? You’ve been thinking for weeks how there must be more and this morning, you could no longer merely think it. Like all adolescents, you’ve been confined long enough. “I can do this,” you think as you bust across the cold.

Though Indy is old and would not have caught you, had I let her go, she would have chased you. You would have felt her breath on your tail. “Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror…” What winter angels will hear you if you cry?