The Ravens And The Rabbit

I woke at 6 am.  Back in bed after three nights of me on the couch and Jon sitting up in his stuffed chair to ease his coughing.  My first thought was that I lost my curiosity, my sense of wonder. My brain is a tightly tied knot and I can’t see beyond myself.

Then, the raven’s throaty caw again and again outside my window.

As I drift back to sleep, images of a raven woman flow in and out with my consciousness. Nothing concrete, just flashes, bits, and pieces.

An hour later I walked into the pole barn to get the shovel and rake and there in the barnyard were six or seven ravens. They hopped on the ground and circled low, landing and lifting when they saw me. Their black bodies turning silver in the light as they turned their backs on me.

I watched all of them disappear into the woods, remembering my visions from when I lay in bed earlier.

It was only when I had cleaned up and was going to close the gate that I saw the dead rabbit not twenty feet from the barn.

Not a whole rabbit, only the hind quarters. It looked like someone had ripped it in half.   The long legs were stretched out as if in a full leap, a pile of gray innards where the rest of the body should have been.

This had been a big rabbit, not something the cats would have left on the back porch.  I wondered if it was the same one that came out to watch Fate circle the sheep a few days ago.

Who had done this?  What animal sat so close to the barn, and devoured a rabbit?  The donkeys wouldn’t tolerate a coyote, fox or fisher. So maybe it was a bird.  The rabbit seemed too big for the Redtail hawks who spend the summer here. Maybe it was an eagle or osprey.

I tried to picture it.

A few years ago I’d seen a bald eagle on the dirt road where I walk with the dogs.  He sat in front of our neighbor’s barn, picking at something in his claws.  It looked huge, at least three feet tall from where I stood, but flew away before I got too close, leaving the remains of the animal behind.

I imagined the sheep and donkeys watching as that same eagle devoured the rabbit.  But why had he left half of it behind?  Maybe it was a coyote or fox and the donkeys chased it away when they came in from grazing.

I searched for tracks, some disturbance in the ground around the rabbit, but it looked to me as if the rabbit dropped out of the sky. I might have thought it did if its intestines weren’t laying neatly next to it.

It made me think about how our domesticated animals live on the edge of the woods, on the edge of the wild. Who knows what goes on at night, what they see, who they chase away or run from, and who they let share their gated space.

I scooped up the rabbit legs and intestines and tossed them over the fence into the tall grasses. But as I walked back to the barn, I realized that it was the dead rabbit that had attracted the ravens to the barnyard this morning.

They were scavenging the remains of someone else’s kill.

It didn’t seem right to me that the rabbit, already dead, shouldn’t be eaten. That I had disturbed the ravens’ breakfast.

So I went back and sifted through the tall grasses till I found the remains of the rabbit.  This time I put it on the highest point in the back pasture.  In plain sight for the ravens or anyone else to see.

As I sit on the back porch writing this, a raven is high in the trees that border the farm. It’s making that “clunking” sound like tapping on hollow wood, round and empty.

The knot in my brain loosens a little as I listen.   I feel like the ravens have woken me up.  Sparked my sleeping curiosity and wonder.  I’m glad I returned the rabbit to them.

I think of the raven woman who came to me early in the morning. I think it’s time to bring her to life.