Mike Nagel
While there are any number of cartoons and children’s books that will try to convince you otherwise, the truth is that we’re really not meant to be friends with wild animals. It’s counter-intuitive, but even the cute ones don’t make good pets. “Would a red panda make a good pet?” I ask Google two or three times a year.
“No,” Google says. “A red panda is a bear.”
“How about now?” I ask a few months later.
“Still no,” it says.
“How about…” I start typing.
“No,” it says before I can even finish my question. “Otters don’t make good pets either.”
“Yeah, but what about a baby otter?” I say.
“That’s still a type of otter,” it says.
The problem, of course, is that I don’t believe Google. Not that I think it’s lying. I just don’t think it’s taking into account all the factors. Like how red pandas have been observed engaging in a mode of play not unlike hide and seek. Or how baby otters have these little pockets on their tummies that they keep their favorite rocks in.
“Do you know about the little pockets?” I ask Google.
“Yeah,” it says. “I know about the pockets.”
In the neighborhood where I live now with my wife and in-laws, we get all kinds of wildlife. It’s hard not to get emotionally involved. The other day I saw an owl eat a mouse.
“Heeeyyyy…” I said. “Wait a second…”
The next day my mother-in-law saw a bobcat. It was prowling around between the houses. There are lots of bobcats around here, but seeing one is rare. This one was limping. Its tail had been gnawed off. Maybe it had been in a fight with another bobcat, I thought. Or maybe with a neighborhood dog. They’ve been known to carry off the smaller ones. They perch on top of the fences and wait for the owners to let their dogs out at night. It’s scary but there’s not much you can do about it. Before his stroke, my father-in-law saw one in the backyard. He called animal control.
“There’s a bobcat in my backyard,” he said.
“No there isn’t,” the guy on the phone said. “You’re in the bobcat’s backyard. This is their territory, sir. Nothing we can do about it.”
Mostly, though, the bobcats hunt rabbits. Around here, there are plenty to choose from. It’s May now, which must be a very sexy time for rabbits. Very romantic. You step into the grass and a half dozen babies explode out from under your feet, spring-loaded, like those fake snakes they stuff into Pringles cans. They poop out Cocoa Puff sized pellets. My dog, Ollie, thinks they’re candy. He eats them until he makes himself sick. Then he just keeps on eating them.
“Ollie no,” I say. “Ollie no.”
They’re suicidal, these rabbits. They dart in front of cars and buses and show very little regard for their own lives. Once a week or so, I find one flattened on the side of the road. Someone must have gone out of their way, I think. Someone must have swerved. By the next day, the bodies are always gone. Carried off, I imagine. Easy prey.
Some homeowners around here think it’s cute to leave treats out for the bunnies, but I think that’s dangerous. It reminds me of a few years ago, when my friend Chris built a squirrel feeder in his backyard. The next day, the neighborhood hawks started carrying off the squirrels.
“So,” he said. “I guess I built a hawk feeder instead.”
There’s a lesson to be learned there, I think, if you’re the lesson-learning type. The lesson might be this: Don’t get involved.
Last summer, a few months after we moved in with my in-laws, we started finding dead bunnies in my in-laws’ pool. They would lean down to get a drink and slip in.
My in-law’s pool is old, made out of pale-blue fiberglass. The sides are slippery. Impossible to climb out of. The next morning, we’d find the dead bunnies floating on the surface, their eyes and mouths wide open in horror. It didn’t happen every day or anything, but it happened often enough that it was starting to seem like a pattern.
“Maybe they’re jumping in on purpose,” my niece suggested. “Maybe they’re hot and want to go for a swim.”
She’s not the brightest, my niece, but she’s pure of heart.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to be a fun uncle who’s willing to engage in humiliating acts of imagination. “Maybe they’re training for the Olympics.”
“Uncle Mike,” she said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
My wife, J, is better at these sorts of things. Dead bunnies, I mean. She would fish out their bodies with the pool skimmer and wrap them carefully in a Hefty bag before tossing them in the trashcan out back.
“The ol’ plastic casket,” my mother-in-law calls it. “That big green dumpster in the sky.”
After the fourth bunny drowned, I went on Amazon and found a pair of floatation devices that attach to the side of the pool. They have a little ramp that animals can use to climb to safety. 4.5 stars on Amazon. 400 reviews.
Still though, I went out every night before bed and stood by the edge of the pool in my pajamas, watching the water for drowners.
While I stood there, I’d think about this pet bunny I’d had as a kid. A medium-sized jackrabbit that my grandparents had trapped out in the California desert. Short-haired and big-eared with teeth that could slice through pine. Friendly, though. Good natured. They’d given him to me for my 5th birthday as a pet. My wild little rabbit friend. Thumper, I’d called him. Thump for short. He’d hop laps around our backyard and lick the backs of our hands with his 40-grit tongue. I brought him with me to Texas where he died immediately. Just dropped dead one day in the heat.
“Huh,” I said, holding up his dead body, which had gone stiff as a pinata. “I guess California bunnies don’t do well in Texas.”
“Oh yeah,” my dad said, poking at him. “Guess not.”
I’d had some doubts about how well I was going to do in Texas too, to be honest with you, but it’s been thirty years, and things seem to be going okay. It took a while, but I made some friends I can relax around. I met a girl with a pierced belly button and a tattoo of a four-leaf clover on her hip. I found some jeans I feel good about myself in. Levi Skinny Fit. 32×34.
Correlation does not imply causation, but after I installed those flotation devices, we stopped finding dead bunnies in the pool. Instead, we started finding alive ones everywhere else. Underneath our cars. In the flower beds.
Last winter, when the temperature dropped, they burrowed underneath the lip of the pool, where the fiberglass curls onto the grass. They built a community for themselves under there, one based on shared resources and mutual respect. A type of governance that has never quite worked out for people but seems to be working out well enough for them. They had babies. Then those babies had babies. Then those babies. A bunny reaches child-bearing age at 12 weeks old. We’re 6 cycles in at this point. We’re multi-generational. They’re not in our backyard, we’re in their backyard.
Sometimes I still go out at night in my pajamas and stand by the pool. I check the water for swimmers. Then I check the fence-top for bobcats. I can’t help feeling partially responsible for their well-being.
“Well,” I imagine one of them saying one day, when it’s finally worked up the courage. “You saved us. Now what?”
Mike Nagel is the author of Duplex and Culdesac, both from Autofocus Books. His essays have appeared in The Rumpus, Passages North, DIAGRAM, Little Engines, and The Paris Review Daily. He lives in Plano, Texas.
Featured photo by Péter Kövesi (Pexels)
