The January 9, 2023 story challenge from Charli Mills at Carrot Ranch is to: In 99 words (no more, no less), write a story that includes rabbits. Is it a family? A strange planet? Some crazy bunny person’s pets? Who are they and what are they doing? Go where the prompt leads!
Page, by D. Avery
“Are you a hunter?”
She’d noticed me looking at tracks in the red sand. She also noticed my interest in the sparse plants.
“That one we made soap from.”
She’d led us through a slot canyon, its carved sinuous walls telling ancient stories of fast moving water. We’d emerged on the upstream side into a sandy gully, a wash, the path water would take, should it rain hard.
Another plant. “That one the rabbits like.”
Sixty year old Lake Powell is drying up, but for now tourists still come.
“I remember,” she said, “When all we ate was rabbits.”
Be sure to go to Carrot Ranch to read the complete “Sabbatical” collection from last week. And there’s always the Ranch Yarns with Kid and Pal’s responses HERE.
ShiftnShake 
Nice story
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True stories, from when I was in Page, Arizona last spring.
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You should’ve come farther north! 😉
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I only wanted to be headed East.
But you look out, you never know.
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My mom made a rabbit pie once when I was a girl. I would not eat it. When my mother was young during the war, they ate a lot of rabbit because there was nothing else. A good story.
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Thank you Robbie. We raised and ate rabbits when I was a kid in the seventies. The practice was much more common in WW2. The woman of this story is Navajo and she was speaking of the wild rabbits that sustained her family when she was a girl.
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Yes, I assumed that was the case. Rabbits are vegetarian creatures so eating them is fine in my mind, it is the cute and cuddly Easter Bunny thing that does me in.
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Rabbits! My dad grew up in Kansas during the depression. Long ago, he told be about the jack rabbits. They were everywhere. No one had any money and you could literally bop the rabbits over the head. He ate plenty of them when he was a kid. Your story reminded me of those days when the sandstorms ate up all the farm land.
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I’m glad to remind you of your dad and his story. It is amazing how those rabbits find enough sustenance.
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They sure like my plants and bushes. I fear I lost my cherry bushes to them last summer.
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Well, you know what to do. Tastes like squirrel.
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LOL! We live where we have an HOA. I’ll have to get really creative.
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Not a lot of romance about rabbits here. Rabbits have been the most disastrous introduced animal to Australia and I remember that before myxo virus was developed we often feasted on ‘underground mutton’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_plagues_in_Australia
And our our iconic Akubra hat is made from rabbit skins. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akubra
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Yep, you all should be hopping mad about the fellow that brought bunnies to your island.
I’m not sure if the woman in this piece is worried or wistful about the possibility of going back to the ways and means of her childhood before the Glen Canyon dam and tourism.
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Well written, D. ❤
And thanks for sharing!
~David
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Thanks!
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So many changes…bad/good? Time will tell. (K)
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It’s sad to see a lake drying. I’ve never eaten rabbit, and never will, I used to have them as a pet when I was a child.
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It’s going to be an immense problem when Lake Powell dries up, but the Navajo will still be there. I feel like the woman I was speaking with was contemplating a possible return to hard times and hard times’ food.
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Seems the world is changing, for rabbits too. Maybe they will be plentiful again.
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Oh, rabbits seem to replenish. Good thing, they seem to be a food source when the going gets tough.
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Tasty, I hear.
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Pingback: Rabbits Collection « Carrot Ranch Literary Community
Nice, gentle reminder of climate change devastation.
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You picked up what I was laying down.
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A beautifully contemplative story, D.
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Thank you Nicole. It’s more recall than story, pretty much the conversation I had with the Navajo woman who led tourists through a slot canyon in the area where she’d grown up. It was a brief exchange but much to contemplate. She also told me of the many family members she lost to Covid. “Not including all the aunties and cousins” she said. I am humbled by what she has endured and continues to endure.
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Watching some of Neil deGrasse Tyson’s pot casts… there really isn’t all that much water on this earth to begin with. Some places don’t have enough, others too much… water.
Rabbits – one of our children knew a family that raises rabbits – for food. I suppose it is all in what one is used to. Some folks eat goat. Or venison. I’m eating more veggies these days.
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I knew a family like that. Once. Or twice. 🙄 Veggies are good too…
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Food is food. Tis all what you are used to and know how to prepare.
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and are prepared to eat
It is all Good.
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True.
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