our zoo

It’s been a year now since my wife and I moved into our current neighborhood. Our initial impressions of the neighborhood was that it was a bit messy with trash and lacking greenery, but we thought it would be an adequate first place. Sadly our landlord doesn’t allow pets in our 4-plex, but we like to think that we’ve had a number of pets while living here. We’ve had wild nesting birds, bats, cats, slugs, and our personal favorite, bunnies.

our favorites

We often see the bunnies running around our parking lot behind the 4-plex and I have a perfect view of them from our windows. Sometimes I’ll see a black or brown blur in my periphery when I’m stuck on a coding problem in the office. When I’m sending Erika off to work in the morning, we often interrupt a bunny game of tag. On 4th of July, we’ll be watching fireworks in the truck bed with our neighbors, both human and bunny.

We love our little guys. I’ve been able to feed and pet some of them too. I’m sure they were once domesticated bunnies, but according to some of our next door neighbors, they’ve lived here for a few generations trimming our lawns and huddling together under warm parked cars through the cold.

our favorite

Erika and I have one favorite. His name is, “The black one”. Of all the bunnies he was the roundest and tended to be more of a recluse. He was a decently smart bunny too. He knew that his fur was pitch black and would camouflage himself next to the tires of black cars. At night he would try to blend in with similarly round rocks, or in the shadows.

spotting

Finding “The black one” was a sort of game that Erika and I would play on our walks at night. It was always nice to see that our friend was safe and happy hanging around our neighborhood. It was fun to spot him in a bunch of different places. When one of us comes home from work, it’s usually the first thing we mention to each other. “I saw the black one on my run this morning!” “Where!” “He was behind the dog pen next door, just hangin out. And then on my way home I saw him under the CR-V.”

Seeing our little bunny was a small thing that always made us smile.

contact

I mentioned our bunny’s dark black fur and how he consciously used it to blend into his surroundings. Last Sunday night Erika and I had spotted our boy sitting in some grass on our walk. Weary that I had just seen him, “The black one” ducked his ears down slowly reducing his height in an effort to hide better. I tried to approach him for a little pet, but I was a little too intimidating and he ran off to the other side of the road.

camouflage

On our way home from our walk, Erika and I saw a lighter colored bunny sitting in one of the main roads of the neighborhood. This other bunny was occupied with something laying in the road and as we got closer, we realized that it was our favorite bunny. He’d probably been hit just a few minutes prior to us arriving at the scene and one of the other bunnies was already mourning his death.

A neighbor from down the street had seen him as they were pulling into their home and was coming back with a snow shovel to move his body so the other bunny could safely mourn someplace else. While I may have played a role in spooking this bunny to go somewhere that eventually led him to getting hit by a car, I think that his camouflage, his most lovable feature, is unfortunately was what got him killed. Late at night, at speeds around 35mph, it’s hard to tell the difference between asphalt, and a vantablack colored bunny.

our new favorites

Erika and I were sad to see our little guy go. We’ll miss looking for him and watching him play. We half-joked about placing a “We love our bunnies, slow down” sign up and cursed the car-centric infrastructure of Orem, but we also remembered the good times we saw our fellow. We were always worried that our bunnies would have trouble facing food shortages, the cold, or getting hit by cars: accepting the possibility that one day they might all have disappeared.

This morning when I looked outside, we saw our tabby cat, but also 5 baby bunnies bumbling around in the grass by the shed. Babies we’ve never seen before. 3 brown splotchy ones, and 2 white with caramel swirls. (The caramel swirls are my new favorites)

lifecycle

Our little guy and his sister est 3-6 months old

Bunnies, software, humans, and perhaps even the universe all have a lifecycle. It can be sad or nerve-racking to see someone or something you love enter a new stage of a lifecycle, whether that’s death, puberty, or disability. Birth, success, marriage, independence are all also lifecycle stages, but can bring immense happiness to its subjects as well as observers.

I’m sad that our favorite bunny is gone, but I’m happy that new ones will live to provide the joy that we’ve had to the next people that will move into the neighborhood. I’ll be sad to move away from this home and zoo, but I’ll be anxiously excited about what the future holds for me and my family.

I’ll be sad to die someday. But hopefully happy I lived a good life.