Have you lost your hare? Apparently according to Google, a hare in Tenerife is a kind of sea slug but I am talking about the four legged, floppy eared variety. You see there was one in front of my house yesterday. He seemed long in the face to be a rabbit and was quite obviously off his beaten track and way out of his depth considering the bit of green in front of my house has more dogs per square inch than it has blades of grass.
My kids were out playing in front when my daughter started yelling about a rabbit. I thought she was pulling my leg but no, there it was, sitting out there looking cute. And vulnerable. Expecting my son to flank the wee thing and send it back towards me was a bit ambitious as he immediately ran towards it waving a stick and it, not surprisingly, took to its heels.
Thinking that was the last we’d see of Brer Rabbit I went back to what I was doing but the kids soon ran to tell me he was back. This time Mega, the black lab had chased it under a plant pot. And Mega’s owner was calling for her away on the other side of the park. Great. I know you can’t sugar coat life for ever but this was not the day I wanted my kids to learn about the internal workings of all creatures great and small.
Mega gave up when I started to show some interest and went off in search of something to play with that wouldn’t sit quivering under a pot and I was able to just pick up the little guy. I couldn’t leave it there because with all the dogs and cats around he wouldn’t last half an hour. I couldn’t take him home because with all the kids, dogs and the cat in my house, he would die of nervous exhaustion in an hour.
I decided to take the rabbit to a fenced off area where I knew there was long lush grass and a lot of possible hiding places and let him go there. I’ve no idea if that was the right thing to do but I do know he wouldn’t have survived long where he was. It was only later on at night that I couldn’t sleep and I started to wonder. He was brown-grey like a wild rabbit but he was so tame…
I had the horrible thought that maybe he actually was a pet rabbit that had got out of a pen in one of the nearby gardens and I had just thrown him out to fend for himself.
Gulp.
That’s when I started looking up Google for Tenerife rabbits and hares and found out that he was a rabbit after all and that in Tenerife a hare is actually a sea slug.
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