Coffee with Rabbits
morning chores on a tiny homestead.
Morning. At first light — which really isn’t so early in December — I pull on a hat and gloves and walk across the crunchy grass to check on the rabbits. Beatrice was expected to kindle1 yesterday, but hasn’t yet. When I lift the lid on her shelter I see she is still very round, her babies still warm and safe inside her. It’s probably 15 F, a startling cold when coming from my nice warm bed. But the rabbits remind me they are just fine. Beatrice has spent the last week vigorously rearranging her house to make a deep nest of straw and fur for the children. You worry too much, she seems to tell me. Relax. We were made for this.
The ice of last night has made the latch on the chicken coop freeze shut, and their automatic door is frozen, too. Time for some real manpower. I pour some warm water on the latch to open it up, while the ladies inside chatter impatiently. Smash. Their rubber water bowl hits the ground, loosing the wheel of ice, and I fill it up fresh from my jug. The ladies all gather round to drink. This is their morning social time, their coffee hour, their water-cooler break. Soon their pen will be full of circular blocks of ice, one for every frozen morning.
It’s a skeleton crew. Three hens have been lost to a hawk in the last few weeks, a frustrating and senseless way to die, if you ask me. If only we had a guard dog, I think. But that is a slippery path to begin down. If only we had a house, and more land… I could think of a hundred things. But then, I could think of a hundred more to be grateful for, a far better use of my time.
Likely we’ll butcher these last five hens for winter stews and start fresh again in the spring, doubling down on the security. Or maybe we will get a guard dog. I don’t need to think about that yet. All I need to think about now is today.
And it’s very beautiful, in the pure cold of the morning.
Inside. Eggs crack into the pan. I pack my husband’s lunch. “Coffee?” he asks me. We have strayed far from our once-every-other day habit. The cold mornings make it irresistible. And besides, he makes it stronger than I do. I leave it to him. Coffee, chores, cold — these things just go together.
After breakfast, I suit up again in my wool ski socks and heavy coat and take my coffee — full of raw milk, honey, and a sprinkle of salt — to check again for baby rabbits. Still no change. Stop bothering us, the two mama rabbits seem to say. We’ll kindle when we’re ready. They gratefully accept my gift of carrot tops.
The sun is well up now, and despite the fierce cold, all the rabbits are sitting outside their insulated shelters soaking up the light. This is their every morning, no matter the weather. Creatures of habit. Aren’t we all?
I like to think of us as creatures. We all do creaturely things. We hunt, gather, rest, protect ourselves, procreate. But we do these things with much more thought and purpose than rabbits do. Perhaps that is not so much a comforting thought as an enlivening one.
One night in the fall Anthony built me a fire, because I asked him to. It was a full moon, so a fire was necessary. We looked at the stars and thought about native tribes of long ago, whose gods were of their imagining and made up of the wind, the sun, the moon, the earth. Can we really blame them? we both thought. Even pagans know a creator, an order, a natural law. Only the fool says in his heart, there is no God. How could anyone step outside on a full-moon night like this and not believe it was made just for us?
We didn’t come out of the earth at the behest of a strong wind, a clap of thunder, or a blue flame. We are born, and marry, and give birth, and die, all within the bounds of His plan. Our common ancestor was brought out of dust at the Creator’s bidding, then set this pattern for the rest of us.
I finish my coffee and linger to watch the rabbits for a moment. They are tender little beings, content in their insignificance. They nibble on blades of grass and maple twigs and wild forage, multiply when we ask them to, and follow their creaturely instincts. I am a creature, too, but I require much, much more. Things like —
I love you. Well done. I’m sorry. Thank you. You’re forgiven. Rise, and walk.
Simba, our dog who is not a guard dog, greets me with his usual vigor. He isn’t cold at all. I think of Buck and the sled dog team in Call of the Wild while Simba and I tromp around the clearing out back, crunching frozen leaves and stopping every few feet for him to sniff things that I can’t see. He could sleep in a hole tunneled in a snow drift if he had to. I was made for this, he smiles at me. The only thing that would make him happier is a good layer of snow. Maybe, Simba. I’m waiting for it, too.
Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if we lived two hundred years ago, and winter meant being homebound. (Let’s be honest — I think about this kind of thing literally all the time.) Or what our evenings would be filled with if not for electricity, and TV, or even books. Would we tell stories, do hand crafts, sing, and whittle by the fire?
What about if we lived on the wild prairie, miles from the closest neighbors, and found ourselves snowed in for days on end? I think the fiercest enemy wouldn’t be the cold; it would be the lonesome. Loneliness can find you wherever you are, if you’re not standing guard, if you’re not ready for it. And winter, as lovely as she is, brings an extra risk. I think if I had nobody else, I’d keep a cat. Or a dog, or some rabbits, or even chickens. As long as you have someone to talk to, even someone tiny with whiskers and paws, it’s very hard to feel alone.
Back to the house — to my hot tea, my pen and page, and the warmth of modern luxury. But I haven’t forgotten. As long as there are chores to be done, I won’t.
"I am tired of this barn!'' said the colt,
"And every day it snows.
Outside there's no grass any more
And icicles grow on my nose.
I am tired of hearing the cows
Breathing and talking together.
I am sick of these clucking hens.
I hate stables and winter weather!"
"Hush, little colt," said the mare,
"And a story I will tell
Of a barn like this one of ours
And the wonders that there befell.
It was weather much like this
And the beasts stood as we stand now
In the warm good dark of the barn —
A horse and an ass and a cow."
"And sheep?" asked the colt. "Yes, sheep
And a pig and a goat and a hen.
All of the beasts of the barnyard
The usual servants of men.
And into their midst came a lady
And she was as cold as death,
But the animals leaned above her
And made her warm with their breath.
"There was her baby born
And laid to sleep in the hay
While music flooded the rafters
And the barn was as light as day,
And angels and kings and shepherds
Came to worship the Babe from afar,
But we looked at Him first of all creatures
By the bright strange light of a star!"
~ The Barn, Elizabeth Coatsworth, Welcome Christmas! A Garland of Poems, 1955
the cutest term ever for having babies, should be used for humans too IMO.