Hunting Rabbits, Part B

The rabbits were safe that first night but we hadn’t given up on our plan.  What else could go wrong?  We had already had our run in with the police which is damned near essential for any well thought out hair-brained idea.   We laid low for a couple of days.  We weren’t totally stupid.  Some opinions may differ on that last point.

Several nights later we exited our apartment, flipped on the headlights of our respective cars and had at least a half a dozen brown hoppers frozen in our beams.  We fired off about ten dollars’ worth of arrows, which is to say all of the arrows we had.  We didn’t hit even one rabbit.  Not one of them even moved.  They didn’t have to.  The safest place for them was right where they were.  Eating grass.  In fact, if they had jumped or moved they might have run into one of our well-placed missiles.  You could almost hear them laughing.  I know rabbits don’t laugh but I swear I heard little bunny laughter.  It sounds just like the little muffled squeak emitted during a stifled sneeze.

We spent about an hour the next morning in daylight trying to find even one arrow.  None to be found.  We were now arrow-less.  We had to assume the rabbits worked all night hiding them.  Probably had a little rabbit bonfire or something.

It was time for Plan B.  We didn’t have one but we knew something would come up.  After all we were college students.  Hell, I was about ready to graduate.  No gang of hoodlum rabbits is going to outsmart us.  It was time for the big guns, so to speak.

I owned a .22 rifle that could shoot shorts, longs or long rifle ammunition.  We determined that the shorts would be lethal enough and would make less noise.  With the nearest neighbor about 75 or 100 yards away we doubted they would hear anything.  It was decided.  We would follow in the footsteps of Teddy Roosevelt, Earnest Hemingway, Frank M "bunny" Allen, and Ramar of the Jungle, and go big game hunting.

I went back to Miami one weekend and brought back my .22 rifle.  That first evening I started my car and turned on the headlights.  We started Marty's Comet and turned on his lights too.  The laughing rabbits were everywhere.  Taunting me with their little brown eyes.  They still remembered the now infamous bow and arrow debacle.

There was a pop, pop, pop, pop and there were four dead rabbits.  The rabbit laughter had stopped.  It was time to collect our prizes.  Out in the field we picked up each of the rabbits and then stacked them next to a nearby telephone pole.  The pole had a street light which made a good reference.  We went deeper into the field to see if we could spot more game.  After several minutes of searching we decided to call it a night.

Then we saw why we should have called it quits a bit sooner.  Flashing blue lights meant that someone had called the police.  We were easy to find in this darkened section of town as the only lights around were on the telephone pole and the four headlights attached to a 1963 Skylark and a 1960 Comet.

We instinctively hid.  Our finely honed survival instincts told us to do so.  We positioned ourselves behind a clump of scrub palmettos.  The two police cars pulled into the dirt driveway of The Armpit and drove up on either side of the still idling Buick and Comet.  So now there was the equivalent of eight floodlights aimed in our direction.  Except for the cactus, broken beer bottles and probable collection of target arrows, you could have played a night football game on that field.  We remained in our hiding place looking like, like, well just like a couple of scared rabbits.

The two cops were looking intently in our direction.  Then one of them returned to his car and began driving out into the field.  We knew if he ran over one of the aforementioned sharp objects and got a flat tire it would be much harder to get him into a forgiving mood.  Many thoughts flashed through our minds.  Napoleon at Ulm, Cornwallis at Yorktown, Robert E Lee at Appomattox.  Yes, we decided to surrender.  We would surrender but we would do so with style.  Placing the bolt action .22 rifle on my shoulder we marched single file out of the darkness and into the light.

The moving patrol car stopped.  We stopped.  I was told to lay down my weapon.  Then we were told to get our butts over to the patrol car.  Asked what we were doing, that infamous phrase was uttered yet once again, this time in perfect two-part harmony, “Hunting rabbits”.  The cop, with a puzzled look on his face and after a brief pause, began to list the possible charges.  Discharging a firearm within the city limits, public endangerment, hunting rabbits out of season.  He then uttered words that would first put us at ease and then cause panic.  He said, “The only reason I’m not going to charge you (relaxation) with anything is that you didn’t kill any rabbits (panic).  Not 25 yards from where we were standing sat a pile of rabbit fur, under a street light no less.

We continued listening to the wise words of the officer while not hearing even one.  We wanted him looking at us and not in the direction of the street light.  Einstein theorized that time slows down as a body approaches the speed of light.  I now had another theory.  Time was ticking slowly, loudly, much like Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart.  It seemed eons before we were told to pick up the rifle and head back into our apartment.  We gladly did as we were told.

Once inside the apartment we did the only thing we could do, we drank some beer.  We watched the patrolmen talking casually among themselves.  We tried to listen to what they were saying but we could only hear the laughter of the rabbits.

This would have been the end of the story but as they say on the infomercials, “wait there’s more”.  The cops eventually left the crime scene.   We waited a reasonable length of time which turned out to be about three beers long.  In such instances time is more easily measured in beer.  We then returned to the scene of the crime to gather up the rabbits.  It was too late to clean them so we decided to tie them up in a melaleuca tree that grew just past our door.  We returned to our apartment and continued with the beer drinking.  It only seemed right after our latest adventure and brush with incarceration.

The next morning we were awakened by a loud pounding at our door and an almost unintelligible tirade of heavily accented words.  We quickly dressed and answered the door.  There she was, our nemesis, Beulah Ligocky (insert horse whinny here).  Bedecked in her finest flowered housecoat from the Ligocky Collection and with her uncombed dyed brown hair all askew and backlit by the morning sun, our landlady was in exceptionally fine voice this beautiful Florida morning.  We couldn’t immediately make out the words.  Her eastern European accent was more prevalent when she was upset.  Our eyes followed her outstretched arm and crooked pointing finger over to a foul site.  There, hanging in the melaleuca, were four basketball sized fur balls covered with flies.  Thoughts of a delicious rabbit stew quickly vanished.

We agreed to take care of the mess and also realized in that moment that the neighbors probably didn’t call the police.  Beulah was the closest neighbor.  Later that day we buried the decaying evening’s carnage in the same field where they met their demise.  We gave up on the idea of rabbits and went back to our seafood.  Late at night we could still hear the laughter of the rabbit herd outside our window.

Laughing Rabbit