There is a cottontail that lives under the spreading Utah juniper tree in my front yard. I use the term front yard loosely. The area surrounding my little adobe house is high desert and unimproved but for a bit of arranging of the rocks and stones that litter the hillside. Also, the rabbit probably lives in a winding warren under the yard, but is only visible coming and going beneath the tree.
I consider this rabbit my pet of the most convenient kind. No muss. No fuss. I simply throw my apple cores out the door and enjoy the furry little rodent scavenger at dawn and dusk. Is there only one? Have you ever heard the cliche, “multiply like rabbits?” Who knows how many? I have seen three at the same time before; two fighting and one watching demurely from the shadows of rabbit brush bush.

Last spring, there were tiny bunnies peeping from rocks and shade along every trail I wandered in a one-mile radius. It was a year when rabbits were plentiful and coyotes few; though I had see a couple canis latrans skirting the property but 12 months previous.

My house sits more than 100 feet back from the road and overlooks an arroyo. In order to get to work, or the grocery, I must descend a winding mile down a road once gravel and known as “Jacob’s Ladder,” but now a paved artery that connects the main city to communities further up the mountain. This fall and winter, the road has been a killing field for rabbits and a buffet for scavengering ravens. Food is not in short supply. I may be the only one who sows apple cores, but horse barns populate the neighborhood. There is hardly a need for cottontail or jackrabbit to stray from home turf. Most of the rabbit roadkill has been near the corrals, where the proverbial grass is greener on both sides of the road. Last week, there was a bunny carcass much closer to home.

“Why do the bunnies cross the road?” I ask again, “When they have everything they need on their own side of the tracks.”