OYM Day 17: The Jack Rabbit

It’s late and I have written 2 drafts already. I hate them both. They are well rehearsed stories and my mind is a soft scrambled egg (another thing I hate). Yet, here I am. Everyday I wait for the idea to fall into my lap, via dream, text message, or grocery store run. It’s day 17 and I think the idea gods are finding me greedy. They’re still plopping ideas into my lap, but it’s almost midnight… they’re making me work for it.

Have you ever seen a jack rabbit? Not in a cartoon or a movie, but in real life, face to bigger-than-you-imagined face? Well, I have. Just once. And I’ll never forget it.

You hear rabbit or bunny and think cute and fluffy with a small cotton tail. You think little hops, maybe Easter eggs, or maybe sluts (depends, I guess). But jack rabbits are none of the above. They’re huge, up to your knees, and shit…I don’t even know what their tails look like, because I couldn’t get passed that FACE. No Easter eggs. No satin corsets. Just a juiced up rabbit with a big chip on its giant shoulder. They look mean. And I’m not exaggerating.

See? It’s angry. WHAT DID YOU DO, DENISE?

I was hiking with my husband on Christmas Day back in 2014, up on Mt. Charleston, just outside of Vegas. There was snow on the ground, Baileys in my thermos of coffee, and we were just jolly little weirdos walking through the pines. Then I saw it. I grabbed Daniel’s hand and squeezed, hard. For some reason I couldn’t get the words out, that there was a giant ass rabbit looking straight at us.

That something was wrong with it, because it was way too big, like maybe this trail is where they dump dead batteries and this rabbit has grown up just eating those big batteries you put in a smoke alarm.

Or maybe rabbits are like bees and this is the queen bee and I’ve just never seen one before because they never leave the hive. But then I remembered bunnies don’t live in hives and that I actually owned bunnies when I was growing up in Indiana, which made me think of my backyard which is full of dead pets. A pet cemetery, really. Which brought my focus back to this prehistoric looking rabbit that was certainly going to kill us. All of this happened in about 2.6 seconds.

“JESUS”, Daniel yelped after I perhaps broke all of his fingers.

I pointed to the beast, but by that time, the jack rabbit had already bolted, a giant dust trail in its wake. I tried to describe what I had seen, but I really didn’t know… not until I got home and had WiFi.

I know I’ve already asked you if you’ve seen a jack rabbit, but also, have you seen “Night of the Lepus”? I hope you say no. I watched it as a kid. It’s basically about a town that gets invaded by giant bunnies with a taste for blood.

I guess it’s safe to say I’m afraid of rabbits.

Goodnight!