The Cottontail Occurence

Coming from a relativity small city, where country living is just as popular as Starbucks, I'm a fan of harvest season. The blood moon, the nights spent in the crisp autumn air, hay rides, bonfires, s'mores, husking...as summer ends the joys of autumn swoop in and steal our hearts...at least my heart. Unfortunately, being a college student, I'm not actually in my home state during harvest season. I get to catch the first part of it, but most of September and October are spent studying. However, I still make sure to make time for my favorite holiday...Halloween. 

As soon as harvest season starts, though, I'm ready to begin the picking. Plucking tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and beans from their vines, helping my mom prepare for her annual canning adventure, and trying to dig through the thick vines of the garden without angering any snakes...it's all pretty fun, really. 

A few days ago -I think it was close to a week ago, really -I volunteered to venture to the garden to get some fresh vegetables for dinner. My mom, as always, let me go. I pulled a large green plastic bowl from the cupboard, put on my old converse -as if I'd let my new ones touch the garden dirt -and traveled the sidewalk around the outside of my parents' house to the garden.  

My family's never had that large of a garden. It's just a modest sized square with various vegetables and marigolds, but it's a place I like to spend time in. harvesting vegetables while the scent of their plants, the marigolds, and the morning glories hang in the air...it's pretty close to heaven on earth. I was doing just that about a week ago. With the green bowl sitting beside me, my hands were plunged into the thick vines of the tomato plants. My eyes were trained on the leaves, the dirt, the shadows, on the look out for those shifty serpents that liked to sleep among the plants.  

Snakes don't really scare me. They have as much right to live on this earth as we -humans -do. As long as they don't threaten me, I'll leave them alone. I mainly look out for them because I don't want to startle them and earn a nasty fang mark from them. So, I kept my eye out for them while inspecting tomatoes. 

I had just pulled a rotting red tomato from the vine when I hard the planets to my right shiver. I wasted no more than a glance on the plants, figuring it was nothing more than a bird, but as I tossed the rotting fruit on the ground the plants began to shake violently. My attention was drawn to them and, slowly, I stepped away from the plants. In order for the plants to be shaking as they were, something of decent size had to be throwing quite the tantrum within them...and I had no interest in finding out what it was. 

I went to the other side of the garden, deciding to try my luck with the cucumbers instead, all the while keeping an eye on the tomato plants. The plants stopped their seizures after a few moments and I brushed it off. It was probably just one of the next door neighbor's cats; Romeo or Juliet deciding to hang out in the garden for a while.  Or it could have been the neighbor across the street's freaky looking Chihuahua. Either way, I had left the green bowl over by them and I needed to put some vegetables in it -my attempt at harvesting the cucumbers failed by the way, so I had green beans and peppers instead . I walked over to the bowl, intending on grabbing it and fleeing, but the plants began to shake again as soon as I approached them. 

"Chill, Ash, it's just a cat," I told myself. "No reason to get so jumpy." 

Hesitantly, I knelt to retrieve the bowl. Before I could even stand up, the creature inside the plants jumped out, aimed right for me. I have to admit that I screamed. Like, literally. I fell back, as the startled scream left my lips. The source of the plant's shivering landing right beside me. It's fluffy body moving fast as it hopped away. That's right, it was a bunny. A fluffy, white-tailed, brown-furred, long-eared bunny. And as I stared after it, hopping off the yard and across the street, I heard laughter tear through the air. From my place on  the ground, I half turned to see the next door neighbor leaning against the railing of his back porch. His laughter was deep and I swear he was almost crying from the force of his guffawing. 

I stood from the ground, brushing off my jeans and muttering about a stupid bunny rabbit when the neighbor called out. 

"Scared of rabbits, are we? You know, cottontail doesn't bite!"

I didn't reply back, but to offer him a wave and a smile. He's a relatively older man, probably somewhere in his late fifties...maybe older, and that was the first time I had ever seen him smile. Normally he just leans against his back porch railing looking depressed, sometimes with a cigarette between his lips. It was kind of nice to hear him laugh. To know that he had smiled at least once...even if it was from a stupid moment on my part. 

Whoever that rabbit was, it sure made my neighbor's day to see it scare the living daylights out of me...and, consequently, it added a bit of sunshine in my own life. Even I, the victim of the bunny's attack, have to admit that the whole thing was rather amusing. Though, I still can't believe that a rabbit was the cause of my momentary fear.