Rabbits

I guess there’s something sick and disempowering to liken yourself to a prey animal, especially as a woman nowadays, but I’ve always been a rabbit. What can I say? I don’t like how blood feels between my teeth, and I’ve never had good enough footing to be any creature that doesn’t scamper. And, as Donnie Darko so coolly said in his 2001 film, rabbits are cute and horny, “and if you’re cute and you’re horny, then you’re probably happy.” I’ve always liked that line, from the first time I heard it when I was 14. It spoke to me, because I wanted to be happy and I was horny all the time. Being an adorable, easy flirt came naturally and got me a lot of attention. That made me happy sometimes.

Later, after my search for happiness had backfired a few times, I was introduced more consciously to my own rabbitness by The Animal in You online personality analysis, based on Roy Feinson’s bestselling book of the same name. Reading what Feinson lists about rabbits for the first time was like reading a summary of everything I had become in my young adulthood: aware of my surroundings – quiet when in danger – shy and skittish, at times – fast and excitable. Rabbits generally live in close families, and I get nervous when it’s dark and no one’s around. They’re kind, helpful, social, and obviously seductive – all traits I have been accused of possessing. Most importantly, and most similar to myself, they aggressively go after resources, at all times fearing scarcity.

The fearing of scarcity is important to this. Resources matter only where there is perceived lack. When I was a kit, the resources I felt I needed to hoard were attention and toys and approval. The best was when I was rewarded by my mother or father with a new Barbie or another stuffed dog for “being a good kid,” which is a perfectly vague sort of acknowledgement. It made me spoiled in some ways, overfed in my spring years. I have never stopped scavenging for approval, but my methods have changed to suit my landscape. A cottontail in the forest, after all, will eat grasses nocturnally. A rabbit in the arctic will dig at snow during the warmer daylight hours to scrounge what’s beneath.

Money became part of this perceived scarcity almost the moment I realized what money was. If not money, then gifts of clothes and personal affects to shelter, comfort, and protect myself. And when offered the choice between dry earth and sweet grass, I know very few rabbits who would readily chose to settle when the grass is being offered. So, once I could, I played dress up, wearing a soft, tight dog whistle to bring wolves to heel. Even if I’d have rather had a vixen, so many wolves remained unmated and kept so much in their stores. I started to think because a wolf held me in his mouth, he was protecting me. I was filling up my stores with attention. I was happy to be eaten because my mouth too was full. I felt smart because I hadn’t been caught; I had chosen to be in his mouth. But it was still a mouth, wet and full of teeth.

When I matured into the summer-coated bunny you see before you, I learned even better ways to get what I felt I needed. A screen to keep men away from me; after all, I still hop with a limp after my young bunny shenanigans. It’s psychological, the researchers speculate. Marilyn Monroe, a famous rabbit according to Feinson’s celebrity animal section, had a similar limp. Pointing at previous logs, the researchers who tagged and tracked her suggest she killed herself because of that same limp. The analysts say it is maybe unlucky to be a cute, horny rabbit, regardless of how happy you are. It would be easier if I did not, on some level, like myself. It would be better if I wanted to change instead of just finding better shelter and better camouflage. On some level, I wish I could wake up as a wild dog—sniff out blood and pounce. I wish I could dip myself into change and peek out as an alligator, quiet and calm, needing only to eat once a week.

But there is no shame in searching for resources. Rabbits in the wild know this inherently and do not feel the need to explain themselves. There’s a spot in my soft chest, right below my rabbit heart which beats a natural 150 times per minute, that reaches out to those who need stability. As far as I’m concerned, I’m in good company with sugar babies and playboy bunnies and people who marry up. Anna Nicole Smith, another of Feinson’s celebrity bunnies, might be a joke to you if you are, say, a bear or a bull. To me, she’s a lost hero. After all, rabbits are friendly, and we know ourselves. We have the gift of finding where we can succeed and going after what we can in our short time, even if we seem very foolish to the rest of the woods.

The problem with appearing cute and horny is that people think you’re dumb. A magpie once told me I had no respect for myself, because I needed someone else to bring me shiny baubles and toys. She could happily do that for herself. I refrained from telling her that I had, in fact, eaten sweet grass from my own paw and liked the taste just fine. I just also liked to be smiled at, sharply, while I ate.

Of course, rabbits always must be on the lookout for foxes and wolves who’d like to take them by surprise and because of this will sleep with their eyes open. It doesn’t make for a good night of sleep though, so rabbits tie themselves to more established, powerful animals. It’s unfortunate for the researchers’ sense of the rabbit’s empowerment, but survival comes at a price. Rabbits typically live only two years in the wild but average about five times that domestically, happy to make friends with humans and cats and dogs. Of course, there’s no such thing as too precious to eat. Even I have eaten rabbit before, prepared in a thick, dark sauce. It was a succulent, small portion. Completely appetizing.

To avoid being eaten, a rabbit mostly survives off of flight. However, the other parasympathetic nervous system response, freeze, plays an important part. A rabbit, when alerted to a predator, becomes very still in hopes to blend in with the surroundings. The scent of her still lingers, and so she must remain motionless as the predator sniffs, takes its time, waits. If a rabbit switches over to flight too quickly, she will most likely be snapped up and devoured.

While freezing has some basis in the wild where a rabbit is colored to match the woods, it makes less sense when she’s alone, say, on the train wearing a bright yellow dress and no bra and a fox starts rubbing his crotch and making kissy lips at her naked legs. All she can think is he wants to eat me and there’s nowhere to go, nothing I can do, but maybe if I stay still, if I see how long I can hold my breath, he’ll just pass on by me. The fox will smile and show all of his wet teeth. “I love soft rabbits with hind legs like yours,” he’ll say, “And your little bunny teeth as so cute.” He’ll spread his legs apart to show that he’s in his season, and the rabbit will pretend not to see because it would be rude to look at someone’s genitals on the train. As a joke, when he sees her ears twitching with discomfort, he will say: “Us foxes are crazy.” The rabbit, who froze with a smile on her face, will release a pent-up laugh. She will want to defend him, to say, “No, I’m sure that’s not true,” but the rabbit will have moved beyond language at this point. The fox will say: “Come back down my den, and I’ll tenderize you. Don’t you want to be tender?” As the fox stands to get off at his stop, he’ll reach over and touch the hem of her bright, summer dress. He’ll flip the edge of it up, and the rabbit will laugh again but this time her face will do something ugly. The fox will get off at his stop. The rabbit will not breathe for the rest of the summer and will wake up sometimes unable to remember what the fox’s face looked like except as a movement out of the corner of her eye. Her mother, who is not a rabbit, will ask why she didn’t stop smiling, when smiling is obviously a gesture of compliance. The rabbit will not know how to answer this and may even freeze again. Or so a rabbit once told me.

I reminded that rabbit that we are only little, emotional things. Rabbits can die of fright. They’ll starve themselves when sad and begin to overheat and waste away when lonely. They throw temper tantrums. It’s always funny: they thrash about, upend and toss whatever’s been left nearby, thump-thump-thumping a message in Morse code to their owner, who is just out of view, giggling and filming the scene to share with their friends. It’s cute when rabbits get mad. They probably get angry when you tell them that, though. But it doesn’t matter. Most people aren’t scared of rabbits.

How very lucky we are: to want so much yet never pose a threat.

Darla Dimmelle is a recent creative writing graduate from Utah Valley University, having earned two minors in cinema and Russian studies. She has been published once before, in MASHED: The Culinary Delights of Twisted Erotic Horror. She is not actually a rabbit but a human woman.