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I have to admit, my first kill wasn’t nearly as traumatic as I thought it would be. Well, at least it wasn’t traumatic for me. But then, I wasn’t on the business end of the passenger-side front tire of my van.

Now I know I have mentioned in the past that every once in a while, when Monkey is having difficulty getting to sleep, I will put her in the van and take her for a drive down a dark country road. This almost always has the desired effect of putting me to sleep. Fortunately, it usually puts Monkey to sleep, too. So, on a night not but a week ago, I decided that the only way Monkey was going to get to sleep was to go for a ride. The stretch of road I drive leads to the San Pedro river, and is typically very pleasant and quiet. However, this particular night was not your typical night. It was lined with a bizarrely large number of jack rabbits.

I have made it no secret how I feel about rabbits. Oh sure, they’re cute and cuddly. Well, cute anyway. I won’t argue that point. They have soft fur, cute little bunny noses, fluffy tales, big ears, and make excellent cash cows for certain giant media companies. I’m not saying I don’t like rabbits. I’m just saying that the collective IQ of the entire bunny population of the world is about that of a sea cucumber. Actually, it’s less than that. You don’t see sea cucumbers running across roads with vehicles bearing down on them at 60 MPH.

So I’m driving along, as I mentioned before, and notice how many rabbits are on the side of the road. Keep in mind, jack rabbits are not your standard cute-little-bunny variety of rabbit. They are large. And I do mean large! One time, I was driving along at night and I pulled into this little turn-around area, and caught a couple of them in my headlights. Truthfully, I thought these things were coyotes. That’s how big they are. And there’s a lot of them on the road this particular night. I began to think there was some kind of bunny ceremony going on. Or maybe a rabbit uprising. Then one ran across the road, and I realized immediately that this had to be some sort of mass initiation ordinance. Kind of like Rabbit Rush Week. You know, like fraternity or sorority rush weeks in college, only this was for rabbits. And I was right smack in the middle of it. Except I wasn’t the one that went “smack”.

Actually it was more of a thud. The sound represented the first time in my 37 years that I knowingly killed anything larger than a wolf spider. How did I react? By immediately imagining the conversation that took place just prior to the incident. Of course, this has been translated from the original Rabbitese.

Ken: Okay, Jackie. Remember, run across the road when a car comes.

Jackie: And then I’m in?

Carl: That’s right. And not only that, if you get across safely, you’ll prove that you’re faster than a car and you’ll get to wear this really cool club jacket.

Jackie: Wow. Cool.

Ken: Here comes one now. Get ready…and…go!

Carl: Go, Jackie! Go! You can do…

THUD!

Ken: oh…gosh. Well, I guess he’s not joining the club.

Carl: Can I have his jacket, then?

The second thought i had was that there might be a mess on the front bumper that I have to worry about cleaning up. The third thought was about wanting to go back and check out the carnage. Admit it, you would have wanted to as well. I was the only one on the road. It’s not like I was going to be holding up traffic, or anything. So, I turned around and went back to check things out. I was relieved to find that it was a clean kill; no mess on the bumper. The rabbit itself was lying motionless in the road. There was a strange look to it. The look one gets when one has been savagely run over by a fast-moving van. I had to admit I was grateful that the kill appeared to be quick. And someone’s mother wasn’t going to have to worry about clean underwear, if you get my meaning.

Now, probably the thing to do at this point would have been to move the carcass off the road so that other vehicles wouldn’t have to worry about hitting it. But to be honest, I was too preoccupied with something else to even think of that.

I was busy looking for that rabbit’s club jacket.