“Starting in January, more than 10,000 baby boomers a day will turn 65 [the traditional age for retirement]. This pattern will continue for the next 19 years.” – , Dec. 27, 2011.
My next-door neighbors are rabbits. No, rabbits.
Two years ago my partner and I moved to a townhouse in a seniors community in Aurora. The adjacent house has been empty. We’re told the wife died; the husband’s in a nursing home; their adult children have decided, for the time being, not to sell or rent the house. The rabbits actually live outdoors, of course, under a big juniper bush next to the neighbors’ patio. We have a good view of them from our own patio door.
We lived in Texas before, and had varmints, although our house was urban, close to downtown. Possums were common, raccoons more so. The raccoons liked to come through the kitty door and eat kitty food. (Our cat watched with seeming complacence.) From time to time the cat brought in other varmints: grass snakes, a blue jay, mice, lizards, locusts, toads. Fred and I were an animal rescue team.
These Colorado rabbits are different. Or maybe we are, having retired, and so having more time for wildlife observation. Our cat, now also retired, stays indoors. The rabbits seem to invite study, and from time to time we mull over rabbit habits and odd bunny behaviors. Our favorite: Two rabbits are in evident interaction. Chasing seems the best description. Suddenly one jumps over the head of the other one, maybe adding a half twist to the maneuver. He lands and remains nearby. The racing and chasing and hurdling may occur more than once.
Curiosity demands an explanation. Is this pre-mating behavior? A dominance maneuver? Or maybe “just” play? (Do rabbits play? Why the acrobatics? )
But wait. And maybe curiosity can wait. Maybe explanation will wait.
Here’s what’s happened. Somehow the racing rabbits have fostered a kind of paralysis in me. I’ve intended to read up on rabbit antics. But when I go to Google, I pull back. I know my surmises about rabbit life are likely wrong, rife with erroneous assumptions of human similarity, i.e. anthropo mor phism, i.e. cuteness. But equally, I’ve hesitated to see what the real animal behaviorists might have to say.
Ordinarily, I think, I’m an inquisitive person. I like to learn things, know things. But apparently not always. I recall an argument years ago between my ex-wife and a longtime British friend. We were on a country walk. Animal life was again the crux. Our friend, bird book in hand, insisted that appre ciation of wild birds depended on identification of their species. My wife — artist, photographer, appreciator in her way — contended that identification of the bird added nothing to its beauty or the beauty of its song. The argument was of course irresolvable.
I’ve come to see that we have different ways of knowing — maybe it’s different degrees of knowing. Another memory presents. I was in high school. I decided one day that having started a book didn’t mean I had to finish it. The book was Boris Pasternak’s “Dr. Zhivago. ” I have no idea what about it I found irksome, or why it bored me, if it did. What I better remember from that moment is a feeling of rebellion, assertion, freedom (I had been a dutiful child) that I think has often been a help to me in later years.
Ponders have finally led me to Samuel Johnson, certainly no partisan of idleness or ignorance. But Johnson also argued (this is a quote Boswell captured) that “no man is obliged to do as much as he can do.” I’ve mentioned my recent retirement. I’m at the age of the life review, with its almost assured catalogue of disappointments and half-met dreams. Johnson’s words bring comfort. And maybe adequate response for those rascally next-door rabbits.
David E. Faris of Aurora is a retired psychologist.
