RABBIT REDUX: SURVIVE OR SLAY, NIGHT IS MURDER
Thursday, March 18, 2021 - daily column #6700
Barely beyond midnight – dark.
Bird-quiet, I knew they’d re-chirp their songs at dawn.
Window open, the night before last.
Silence-full moonless inky night, intermittently disturbed by a rag-tag symphony of traffic humming, trains clickety-clacking and far off siren wails, breeze bathed familiar noises, playing like scales, that easy-flow, with sound-spaces interrupting nightly notes.
Not uncommon to hear coyotes howling in the park, but this was a different sound.
At first, I thought it might be someone in the building opposite having a loud stereo, but this sound hauntingly unfamiliar rhythm was neither on-time music nor soothing.
I went to the window to investigate.
By then, a reality unfolding like a Disney nature film – a colossal, the kind marauding animals ought to fear. Perched atop that gable peak, the opposite side of our parking lot, illuminated by the parking lot lights.
Below my window, in shadows between trees and patios, hopped along a well-fed mature rabbit. The intensity of hooting predator and nervous prey was intense, compelling to watch. I expected, at any moment, that owl would swoop down for the kill. I was silently cheering for the rabbit. But I didn’t want to spook the owl or spoil what might unfold.
Prey of night, in dead of night, neither quiet nor dead – owl lifted off, flapped once, disappearing southward, while that rabbit continued to browse in the shadows.
I returned to bed – with a new appreciation for the rabbit-to-feed-owls supply chain.
As morning arrived, magpies were foraging around where that rabbit had been cowering. Hard to know whether that rabbit was owl-lifted or simply had all that poop scared out of him.