The bunny and the bird: A fable for fractionated times

In my Sunday afternoon writing group, this image was the prompt for our weekly writing task. Interestingly, some of us saw a squirrel where others (me included) saw a bunny. The picture inspired me to write this fable.

“But who are you if you cannot burrow?” asked the bunny.

“And who are you if you cannot fly?”, asked the bird.

Both creatures were resting on the cold white snow, so recently fallen it was unmarked by humans’ grit or grime. They had come face to face, quite unexpectedly, these two quite different beings, though both quite beautiful.

They had been surprised to see each other on that hillock of snow, but not shocked. While not yet old, they were wise enough to know that any day can bring surprise and joy or grief and sorrow or all those feelings in any combination. While the one hopped and the other flew, they both were part of their surroundings in a way that human animals rarely are.

The bunny asked, “What is flying?” And the bird replied, “It is soaring high above the ground, finding the wind as friend in eddies and as foe in gusts, but, always, the wind is a lifting force.”

“Oh,” said the bunny. “I don’t think I have ever felt the wind.”

“Oh, I’m sure you have,” said the bird. “But you may have experienced it differently, down here on the ground. While up in the sky, I dance with the wind; down here, you likely duck from it. You see, what I feel through my feathers, you feel through your fur, and that will make the one thing — the wind — seem quite different to me and you.”

“Oh, oh,” said the bunny. “But I want to feel the wind as dance not as duck. Oh, why can’t I feel as you do? I want to be a bird!”

“Now, now, little bunny,” answered the bird. “With your big ears and handsome big paws, you will never be a bird. Just be yourself and enjoy the wind as she appears to you, as you experience her. While I will never burrow and you will never fly, we both are home where we live. Treasure what you feel as yourself. It’s as true as anything will ever be in this life.”

The bunny leaned forward and touched, ever so gently, the hard beak of the bird with his soft wet nose, saying thank you in the best way he knew how. Then turned, and hopped away, leaving his own mark in the clear white snow. The bird watched him, then flew up and away, leaving no mark except upon the heart of that soft sweet bunny.

Though we are all different, and we see and experience the same things quite differently, we all walk the same earth.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.