Muhammad and the White Rabbit

There is a chirping baby bird in a shoebox next to my microwave. Next to it, a measuring cup and a spoon both caked with soggy dog food, hardening crust around the edges, a few fallen chunks, smeared and crisping on a bath towel underneath the small avian nursery.

"Let's try to identify the species of bird it is, then look up the diet of that type of bird!" my seven year old son, Elliott, brightly exclaimed as I lackadaisically listed potential items with which it might be nourished.

It's like this orphan baby animal scene is on repeat, like a disc skipping. The glaring clumsiness of wildlife within a mile proximity of our home is bewildering. The idealized perfection of nature and its intricate interworking’s stand critical questioning around here.

Birds, bunnies, raccoons, bats, possums, frogs- drowning in pools, crashing into walls, falling out of trees, choking on oversized crickets. They go from their near death experiences and find their way into the light of the tiny merciful hands of my children, whose concept and forethought of care and responsibility for pets is equal in size to those tiny itty bitty baby hands.

Their compassionate humanity is admirable, almost inspirational. The kids’ days turn into high anxiety rescue missions, finding runts, the crippled, the clumsy and unfortunate, destined for doom. A restructuring of the natural order, throwing multiple monkey wrenches into Darwin's cleanly penciled-out design.

Their anxious faces of eagerness and panic peer through the sliding glass door of the house, pounding for assistance and impatiently yelling for me as they hold whichever aforementioned victim, cupped in their hands, awaiting my approval for giving the go ahead for a second chance at life. Turning my back, mind you, equals condemning the orphan to a death sentence in the electric chair of predation and the natural elements.

Last month it was a pink baby bunny, the size of a tiny dill pickle, its eyes still closed. The boys pleaded for me to locate milk, that the cottontail infant needed nourishment. Dozens of rabbits swarm around our yard at dusk, a feeding frenzy for lurking coyotes and swooping hawks. I recognize that life is precious, but its turnover rate in the small animal department is extraordinarily rapid, and one can tend to grow acceptance of the churning reality of death. The biologist in me doubted that the loss of this particular marble sized meatball was going to affect the overall survival of its species or the delicate balance of the ecosystem. I informed them that I did not produce milk for baby bunnies and to inquire with their father for any further assistance.

They ricocheted back to Daniel, where he optimistically enlightened them of his many successful outcomes with rabbit rescue and rearing and that cow's milk works splendidly. Their eyes glittered with sparkles. I reluctantly nodded my head... while envisioning the frequent scheduled eyedropper milk feedings, the following waste product and associated smells to attend to, the cluttery apparatus on our countertop which would be necessary to house the small beast, and then the eventual and inevitable emotional hardship of separation if we did, indeed, succeed in getting it to the point of release.

Potentially months of being bound, to nursing a high maintenance creature, alongside the obvious everyday hurdles of baby human rearing (and their associated waste products), and then the most likely imminent predation upon release of the deeply resented innocent sweet baby bunny with no survival skills, and then the guilt, self-hate and confusion of all of the above thoughts and emotions on my part to ice the orphan baby cake conundrum.

A giant snow white rabbit hopped into our barnyard yesterday, moments after arriving home from our three week trip abroad. It was tame, and of course, vulnerable and needy. From out of nowhere it appeared, like a ridiculously uncamouflaged magic trick. We had just trekked across southern Europe and into North Africa with our backpacks, ridden by train, taxi, camel and boat. Unbound and charged by the juices of the mystical Sahara and Jebel Toubkal, the flamenco dancing gypsies of Sacramonte, the dark labyrinth of the ancient Moroccan medinas. Freedom and strength created through drinking in the unknown and unfamiliar, the untethered adventure of foreign travel. The white rabbit's nose twitched, and it stared me down with its red eyes as if to say, "Welcome home, nothin's changed here."

We were back at the farm with all of its wildlife, raining down from nests like clumsily flapping raindrops into puddles of vulnerability, blindly exiting safe burrows at the most inopportune times of day for avoiding predation, and of course precariously dangling over poolside edges for sips of water, from a source with no emergency escape route.

Hundreds of stray cats roamed the streets in Morocco, fed and revered by the Muslim people. I had a conversation with a man in Marrakech, inquiring about the noticeably healthy feline population. He told me of a hadith, a story from the prophet Muhammad. He once cut off the sleeve of his coat in order not to disturb a kitten who had fallen alseep ontop of it. Muhammad tells of a woman who went to hell for not feeding or giving water to a starving cat, which then dies. The markings on a cat are said to be from the strokes of the prophet's hand, and the stray cat, to this day, is a symbol of the principle theme in Islam, compassion.

So throughout the day I have been feeding this little ravenous bird. I have read the instructions online of what and when to feed it. On demand, meaning whenever it chirps, which is approximately every half hour. It's growing on me, as it shows its fight for life, its wide open desperate beak and its little pathetic feathers sticking out of a tiny muppet tuft on the top of its head.

Maybe it's the contagious charity and compassion of the Muslims we spent time with, or just the fear of the lady who goes to hell for not caring for the vulnerable. All mixed up between Ramadan, stray cats, white rabbits and fallen birds, I feel grateful to be secure and fed. I recognize the fortune it is to be able to be the one that others come to in order to get help, to have a surplus of food, energy and a safe, warm home in which to find comfort. I guess, instead of feeling put out by all of these little needy creatures, I could grow more to feel blessed by the fact I have what I do, act with a charitable mind and heart, and a sharing spirit of flexibility and compassion.

Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" continues to run through my head as I write, and it's late. I guess it's time to go to bed...   "When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead... Remember what the dormouse said...Feed your head, feed your head." The words should say, "Go to bed, go to bed."