Follow the White Rabbit

The other evening, as Kevin and I were driving down our back alley en route to the grocery store, what should cross our path but a white rabbit. And this was no domestic bunny rabbit, mind you. This was an enormous white hare, easily ten times the size of Fanny, with powerful hind legs and long, grey-tipped ears. But then, almost as soon as we had seen it, it was gone.

I would have thought I had imagined it, had not Kevin seen it, too. We live right in the heart of downtown Edmonton, a city of some two million people, and you don't expect to encounter wildlife in your back alley. Hookers and drug dealers are about as "wild" as it gets around here. However, I suppose a city as spread out as ours and covered in a thick blanket of snow isn't actually as inhospitable for wild white rabbits as it may seem, and then again, there are all of those convenient garbage bins at their disposal.

In the days since, I haven't been outside without scanning the alley for white rabbits, but until today I hadn't seen so much as a paw print. Then this morning, Kevin called on his way to class to say that he'd seen three of them hopping across campus, and this afternoon I saw one of my own scampering down the alley as fast as his legs could take him. No doubt he was running very late for something.