Hunting Rabbits, Part A

This story will be in two parts, neither of which directly involves alcohol.  A little background is in order here.  I had at this time moved off campus to a dump we affectionately called “Armpit Acres”, aka “The Armpit”.  I say we since I had a roommate, Marty, aka “mini-kid and “teen-king”.  The mini-kid handle was due to his height as he was the shortest in our group.  The rest of us went from 6’-2” (me) up to 6'-8” (Big Jon).  

If you are wondering I was called “foghorn”.  This moniker was bestowed after several boating excursions where, trying to find a good dive spot I would be towed by a ski rope over the reefs.  When a good spot was found I would drop the line.  Someone was supposed to carefully watch me so the boat could be stopped in time to return.   When this the watcher failed in his duties it could be several minutes before they would notice I was no longer being towed like bait.  The search would begin.  When I would spot the returning boat I would bellow out like, you guessed it, a foghorn.

Since we were responsible for our own food at The Armpit we needed to be creative.  We had but a limited budget and we needed all we could save for beer.  Well, I thought this story didn’t involve alcohol.  Our main source of sustenance was spearfishing on the nearby reefs.  This was a regular activity and we had every manor of seafood available.  We had snapper, grouper, blue runners, sting-ray, turtle and the occasional Florida lobster.  We had fish and rice and fish and instant mashed potatoes and sometimes just plain fish.  The point here is, we ate a lot of fish.

Whenever we would return to The Armpit after dark we would park our cars facing the large overgrown lot next door.  As the headlights would pan the field we would see rabbits hopping about.  Normally I wouldn’t have ever thought of killing the Easter Bunny for food but we were getting tired of fish.

How to catch a rabbit?   We all had seen the old cartoon trick with the cardboard box, a stick, some string and a carrot.  As kids we had all at least believed something that logical should work.  But now, at the ripe old ages of 19 and 20 we knew we needed a better plan.  We knew we could do it.  After all we were in college and we were very tired of eating fish.

We analyzed the situation.  We were about 75 to 100 yards from the nearest neighbor.  The rabbits were no more than 25 to 50 feet away from where we parked our cars and they seemed to freeze in the headlights for at least a minute or two.  The decision was easy.  We would go native on the tasty little fur balls.  Bows and arrows it was.

Our next weekend trip back to Miami we both picked up our old fiberglass bows and regular target arrows.  We surmised that the rabbits couldn’t be any more elusive than the large center circle on the targets when we went to camp.

It was Sunday evening nearing dusk.  The lighting would be perfect.  The rabbits wouldn’t know what hit them.  We decided our first rabbit hunt would involve speed and stealth.  A literal blitzkrieg attack on the little varmints.  We had to use increasingly harsher descriptions of the rabbits in order to feel like they needed elimination.

We stopped my 1963 Buick Skylark convertible two blocks from our turn into the driveway.  The top was down.  Marty got out as planned and strung his bow.  He grabbed a fist full of arrows and walked to the front of the car.  He hopped on the hood and placed his feet as best he could on the narrow bumper.  The Buick had never had a hood ornament before, now it did.

1963 Buick Skylark

With one arrow properly notched Marty moved the bundle of extra arrows to his mouth.  Securely clenched in his teeth the spare projectiles would be instantly available.  Now with Marty safely atop the center of the hood, with bow and spare arrows at the ready, I put the car in gear and slowly drove the final two blocks.  As this street was way out in a thinly populated section of town we didn’t expect to encounter any traffic.  Certainly not the Boca Raton police car that drove by us in the opposite direction.  At this point it was like I was watching a film in slow motion.  I was doing maybe 5 mph and the patrol car wasn’t going much faster.

In anticipation of the inevitable I stopped the car.  I could see in my side mirror that the patrol car had done the same.  The back-up lights of the patrol car came on and he backed slowly up next to my car.  The officer exited his vehicle and walked very slowly to the front of the Buick.  His head was down as he walked.  He stopped in front of Marty who now really looked like a hood ornament for lack of any movement.  Marty’s eyes stared straight ahead.  His bow and notched arrow pointed forward.  The patrolman raised his head at an angle (picture a David Caruso CSI Miami cocked head turn) and stared at Marty.  Marty returned the stare.  After a seemingly long silence the officer said in a soft voice, “What are you doing?”

Marty with his teeth still clutching the bundle of arrows grunted, “Huntin’ rabbits.”  Another long silence.  The officer then lowered his head and very slowly walked back to his car.  He put the car in gear and slowly drove away.  We could only surmise that it was the end of a long day and he didn’t relish the thought of trying to figure out what to put on all of the paperwork he would need to fill out.

We drove into the Armpit parking area and went into our apartment.  The rabbits were safe for another day.