The hare has always been an animal with strange implications to me. I used to watch the animated adaptation of Watership Down as a lad, almost religiously. As a result, I've never been able to think about hares being cuddly little harbingers of Easter. I've got a scar across my right wrist, from the radial side on down, diagonally across the forearm. It's faint now, but visible in some light. It looks like I tried to do away with myself, but nay. It's a rabbit scar.
Growing up we used to keep all manner of animals. Goats, rabbits, chickens, guinea pigs, finches, reptiles of all description; our house was something of a menagerie. One of the rabbits we had was a distemperate beast, a huge white thing with cumulonimbus fur perpetually matted with feces and mud. All our animals (with the exception of one goat, for a brief period) were outside dwellers. Anyway, this rabbit hated everything. It's stereotypically adorable exterior hid a heart black with wroth. It would bound across the yard, hating the earth under it's cute not-quite-dainty paws with every stride. It would never let anyone get near it. One day, we had to capture it because a neighbor was bringing a dog over. Apparently this dog was a rabbit killer. So we set to the task, running around like maniacs to corner this fell, benighted creature in the garden. It was finally caught without an escape route next to the body of an old Datsun Roadster that used to hulk among the weeds back there, and I set upon it like a shot. I wrapped my arms around it's bulky frame while it struggled frantically, rasping and squealing like a demon in a church. It's big back legs pounded into my chest and it gained purchase enough to bound free. On it's way out of my clutches, it took a kick at me and raked one of it's vile talons across the arteries in my wrist; a clear attempt to kill it's would-be captor. But as luck would have it, I didn't die, and instead seized the beast by his ears as blood dripped from my wounds. It was later killed by a different dog.
