Down on the Batture

Rabbit

- 96 r Rabbit The rabbit came barreling up the slope and across the path ahead of me like a racing dog, stretched flat out, ears laid back, one big eye showing white all around. The belly was swinging heavily ; it could have been carrying young. Then I saw the men. The one in the lead was coming up the same slope fast, yelling, “I got him! I got him!” and waving what looked like a club. It was a club, a golf club with a round wooden head, the kind that knocks the ball a hundred and fifty yards from the tee. Behind him was his son, couldn’t mistake him for anyone else, a carbon copy of his dad halved to about three feet high and two feet wide, a little more cautious about the guy in the helmet he was seeing ahead of him, up on the levee top, on a bicycle, that would be me. I braked hard and rose up on the pedals, curious, a question written all over my face.“Rabbit hunting!”the man said, waving his golf club. His eyes were as wide as those of the rabbit and his face flushed in the climax of the hunt. The rabbit was getting on down the far slope. This guy on a bicycle was in the way. Doing the same calculus in my head, I slowed the bike to a crawl, looking beyond the two on the cement apron of the levee to the woods below, where another man and another boy were emerging from a bramble thicket set in shallow water. The man was wearing rubber waders, waist high, and had his own golf club in hand, its metal head set at an angle to blast shots out of a sand trap. His boy was carrying a stick. - 97 Rabbit There wasn’t much space down there for rabbits that month. The Mississippi River had been at flood stage for a long time, leaving small patches of the higher ground for cover. Every creature that lived on dry land was compacted onto that space. From a hunting rabbits point of view, this was heaven. I tried to digest the scene. By coincidence, although it was late afternoon , prime getting outside time, there was no one else in sight. What would these men have done if a family had been walking by? What would they have done if I hadn’t happened by on a bicycle? Beaten the animal to death on the levee top? Stun it and then turn the clubs over to the boys, the way a good mother lion teaches her young? I pedaled away, not looking back. I didn’t want to know what came next. The yards down to my right were fenced off with chainlink mesh or wooden slats, the lawns mowed neatly to the edge, no bushes, not many spots for a rabbit to hide. Whether the hunting party pursued this one I cannot say. Instead I began asking myself why I was so shocked by the spectacle . After all, humans have been chasing after animals in the wild since long before they were doing almost anything else. Like it or not, this was a very ancient play and, in its way, a very natural one. I wondered whether I would have reacted any differently had the men carried guns and were shooting at rabbits instead. I’m told the levee police do it from time to time. Maybe it was the golf clubs. I never had the patience for golf, but it has always seemed an innocent way for mostly men to get away from mostly their wives and have something else to compete over besides making money. The settings of a golf course are also genteel, if deceivingly so, with the green grass, white clubhouse, and bright little vehicles so that you do not have to strain yourself by walking. Indeed I had just passed a golf course down the levee not half a mile away.Wielding golf clubs against a rabbit seemed a little like gents in tuxedos chasing after animals with their cutlery. It was the juxtaposition of it all. - 98 Rabbit The men after the rabbit were not in tuxedos, however. They probably lived in one of the tidy little houses below, with a plastic wading pool outside. I’ll confess that I shot at sparrows, tin cans, bottles, and anything...