Attribution: Photo by Mike Lewinski on Unsplash
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, joins the keeper in lamenting the disappearance of jackrabbits in Wisconsin. Nobody has seen one for years and DNR biologists say they are officially “extirpated.”
In his boyhood Barron County days, the big white jackrabbits were like the royalty of winter, jumping up from close by and leisurely hopping gracefully off across the snowy fields to stare back from a distance at the cloddish creature that had disturbed it.
One spring, the keeper happened onto an isolated field where a half dozen Jackrabbits had gathered for family planning and to exchange their royal white winter robes for the brown work garb of summer. It was like peeking into one of the Almighty’s dressing rooms and the images remain clear some 80 years later.
If the keeper tries to tell Phyllis about it—which he probably already has done a number of times, she will listen patiently and then join in a discussion of the meaning of the word “extirpated,” leaving the keeper to wonder about its possible personal application.
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