Bunny!
“Bunny!” my mother cries out as she runs to the sliding glass door. It’s 8 p.m. The backyard is a speckled sea of landscape lights against a black canvas. Artificial light throws shadows against the various branches, leaves, and limbs of bushes and trees. To the left, the leagues of foliage are broken up by a patch of grass, partially yellowed from the cold weather of winter. Upon the grass, where it met the stone pavers, sat a gray desert hare. Bunny.
About six months ago, Bunny began sneaking into my family’s backyard. We initially were not too fond about the initial appearances of Bunny (Who wants some strange rabbit sneaking onto their property to bite their plants to shreds?) But… It's a bunny. How much harm could it do? Besides, our yard had welcomed lizards, spiders, and other garden beasts with open arms. Why not let one more friend in, especially a fluffier one?
On his earliest nightly visits, we just referred to him as the bunny. Then, we simplified that to “Bunny” as his appearances became more frequent. Every night, he would somehow sneak into our yard to eat the well-kept grass. We checked and double checked the perimeter to find out where he was coming through, but never had any luck discovering it. Like magic and like clockwork, Bunny would always appear on the grass as night draped over the day.
Eventually, Bunny stopped showing up. My mother thinks it's because he has grown too big for whatever entry he was using. He’s now left to the hybrid urban wilds of Nevada. He’s probably hopping around some empty dirt lot, munching on arid desert plants and burrowing in dusted hideaways carved by its natural neighbors. Missing the fresh grass and plentiful shade of our backyard.
Bunny’s bunking with my family reminds me of the strange way that nature exists in the rapidly developing Las Vegas valley. For many people, they live in suburbs built upon wide open, flat desert lots. However, many animals like bunnies, coyotes, lizards, and more have lived there long before the introduction of people. But no matter how much the ancient desert of Nevada has been reshaped and transformed, the ancestral creatures of the state still manage to stick around. Though now, those same animals are now pigeonholed into what remains of the desert.
This has led to some very unique interactions between man and beast, some of which would go on to define my day-to-day life. As a kid, I remember being in the backyard with my sister trying to find lizards as they skittered across the stone walls that divided our property from our neighbors. I remember being awoken at night by the howl of a coyote, left to wonder if the canine was wise enough to avoid the zooming lights of late-night drivers. Even when I go to work, I often stumble upon cats or quails living on the red landscape rock outside many local businesses. Nature, no matter the rivalry proposed by mankind, always persists.
With that, I have to hope that Bunny is still out there. Maybe not in my backyard, or someone else's. But somewhere amongst the blackened streets, the neatly placed properties, and the endlessly swelling expanse of the city. One small rabbit in a concrete world. Somehow surviving as humanity thrives. Maybe someday, I can see Bunny in my backyard again.
