Whilst walking through the park with my boys after dinner this evening, we spotted this little fellow:

You can’t tell from this picture, but he was moving strangely, and his (or her, I suppose) other ear flopped around when he moved as though he could no longer make it stand up. Plus, he was nibbling grass in broad daylight over ten feet from any cover.

This, my friend, is no wild rabbit. As we realized later, this is a tame rabbit that has had, in all likelihood, the worst day of his life. How do I know? His behavior; his wide, staring eye; and then there’s his color. I’ve never seen a native rabbit that shade; all of our native rabbits are gray. In fact, they are just about the same color as this lizard, which we spotted at about the same time:

About the only good thing we can say about this rabbit’s future is that by this time tomorrow he will no longer be hurt and terrified, because a coyote will have gotten him. The lizard, on the other hand, will be just fine.

Update: Jane saw this rabbit again several days later, still hopping about in the open in broad daylight (it was mid-morning), but still ambulatory. Apparently my predictions of its demise were over-pessimistic. Still, I think it’s unlikely to last the summer.