Kites and Rabbits

I took the kids to a park with the bikes the other day to get out of the house after days of rain. . It was an unusually warm pretty day for January and we had a great ride around the park and down the trail. When we got back to the truck there was a woman unloading something from her car. The kids started trying to fly their kits that we keep behind the seat for occasions such as this.

I was treated to watching the kids cooperate in an attempt to get the little plastic kite to stay in the air in almost windless conditions, and watched the woman carrying a cat carrier toward the baseball field. The field at this park is completely fenced in and she looked at the fence, and I imagined that she was going to abandon the carrier and whatever was inside it on the field. It looked so suspicious that I snapped a picture of her car with my blackberry so I could report her should she really throw the carrier over the fence and leave.
She went back to her car and got a bungi cord and headed back to the fence. The gate to the field is usually locked, which seems odd since it’s a city park, and as I watched she attached the cord to the carrier, swung it over the fence, and gently let it go, so it was hanging on the field side of the fence just off the ground. Then, as I expected to see her head for her, she jumped the fence and put the carrier on the grass. She opened the carrier and pulled out a dwarf rabbit. It sat at the door of the carrier and she stepped back, bent over with her hands on her thighs, and said “come here, come on” and she clapped her thighs as if calling a dog

I’m a city kid, or at best a suburb kid and I don’t know much about rabbits, but I am pretty sure they don’t come when you call them. This rabbit confirmed this for me by scurrying back into the carrier. The woman walked over to it and pulled the little thing back out, and then pulled a second one out and set it on the grass. She took a few steps back and continued calling the rabbits. The continued not coming.

Now while I was certain this was a misguided effort, but at the same time her ernest and sincere effort was adorable. She ran around and called to them, went through a variety of motions, sounds and expressions trying to get them to notice her, which they gave no indication of doing. It was almost sad the amount of effort she was putting in for the reaction she was getting from the rabbits. The kids had managed to tangle the kite string and I walked over to help them, and the woman hooked the bungi cord over the fence, and climbed back over the fence. She carefully packed the carrier into the back of her civic and drove away.

We headed for another park with more wind, and the kids got to fly the kites for a while.