Judith Shapiro

4VAC15-40-286. Unauthorized feeding of wildlife

I met a rabbit yesterday. A small, brown wild rabbit. Early morning, the only humans in the park, we walked holding hands. Unusual for us here. We never hold hands in the afternoon when children come to the park, mainly with nannies and moms, darting around on scooters and bikes, doing cartwheels in the grass, playing whatever games little kids do these days. People walk dogs; a solitary man squats against a tree, smoking a cigarette, then another, and another; a woman walks laps around the circular path, cell phone at her ear, excitedly talking in a language. I don’t understand. Is she arguing? No, we don’t hold hands then.

This morning we stopped, all three of us, me carrying a bag of treats, the rabbit chomping on stuff in the weeds. We stared for what seemed like forever, probably a minute. I blinked. Its bright, nearly black eyes never closed. I’d google later – Do rabbits blink?

This scrap of urban wilderness, seven acres tucked behind the library, is part of the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The Chesapeake is miles away. Watersheds must be huge. I studied watersheds in college, forget whatever I learned. I memorized and have forgotten the Krebs cycle and the essential amino acids; studied quarks, neutrinos, and atoms with electrons racing around their nuclei in wide orbits, empty space.

I studied science, she painted and sculpted. We ate ramen, boxed macaroni and cheese, hot fudge sundaes from Dairy Queen. And we fed squirrels. A tiny squirrel-size picnic table on our back deck fed Harvey, our fat, grey buddy and his friends. Nuts piled high for them. High Squirrel TV for us.

I knock hard on tabletops now, confounded by that empty space. And that we’re all made of atoms. Me and the oak rocking chair and squirrels and a brown bunny in a tree-filled park bounded by suburban streets, houses on cul-de-sacs. All of it.

We come to walk amongst the trees, to feed woodland creatures, drop our haul in a clearing tucked back from the path. Dua says deer in her yard like almonds. The skunk under Bobby’s deck is fond of Cheez-its. Wes’s raccoons are crazy for corn chips. Kris leaves leftovers beyond the creek in her yard, where her dogs can’t go. Hers like ours—stale bread, aging cherry tomatoes, vegetarian stew, sad blueberries, cashews, walnuts, sunflower seeds, carrots, romaine.

They like apples and watermelon but not too partial to strawberries. I know because sometimes I check back, hide behind a bush, waiting, watching. Squirrels and birds are first on the scene. Rabbits and chipmunks must sneak over later. Last week it was a pita-loving fox.

And me, still finding joy in breaking the law after all these years.

Judith Shapiro is a Washington, DC writer who spends a lot of time in Hoboken, NJ staring at the New York skyline. When the novel she’s writing looks the other way, she secretly delights in flash prose and poetry. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, her work appears in The Citron Review, The New York Times, Bending Genres, The Sun and elsewhere.