Of Rabbits and Men

With a thick cover of snow covering our back yard, we've recently discovered a couple sets of animal tracks indicating that we may have a couple more neighbors than we thought. We had so far made our acquaintance with a tattered tom cat, the raccoon who occasionally raids our garbage, a family of pigeons who seem to have taken a liking to our bedroom window, a pair of crows in the maple tree, along with their entourage of silly sparrows, and the three boisterous squirrels who chase each other around our alley. We've become familiar with all of their sights and signs, so we knew right away that the long tracks in the snow must have belonged to somebody new. A few nights ago, as I was opening the door, my eyes suddenly met with the frightened stare of a little white rabbit crouched by the jasmine bush. We looked at each other for a good minute, both surprised by each others presence, before leaving each other alone and going our separate ways.

The sight of all these animals in the city still startles me, even after living here for over a year. Where I come from, cities are ancient human enclaves effectively separated from nature over the course of many centuries. The sight of a squirrel in a city park is a rare and celebrated occurrence, and rabbits can only be spotted far off in the country, away from human dwellings. The only time I had ever seen a raccoon was at the zoo - a funny creature who liked things so clean that he meticulously washed all of his food. When I first looked in the dictionary to see if I knew the Polish name for the scary creature that dug in our garbage, I could at first not believe that it was the same thing - in fact, I still wonder if the animal I saw at the Polish zoo as a little girl might be a different type of raccoon than those in Minnesota?

Even if it should be so, I can't hold the same disbelief with regard to squirrels - they are definitely the same species, yet I am about the only person I know who stops at their sight with amazement and wonder. There are, in fact, so many of them here, and they cause so much damage to people's houses, that they are seen as an outright nuisance - much like rabbits, who nibble on people's flowerbeds and gardens. One man's joy is another's pest... We even have a friend a couple of blocks away - if you are a child in Poland you may want to stop reading right here - who regularly shoots squirrels with his BB gun!

The culture of shooting is a subject for a post of its own, but the various connotations of raccoons and squirrels actually made me think of people the other day. They remind me of a man I got to know back in Poland, who came on numerous missions trips with a deep sense compassion for the young people of my country. Shortly after I moved here, we had a conversation about the part of the city where Billy and I chose to live, and I was taken aback by his open hostility towards my new neighbors - "these lazy troublemakers who live off others' taxes and make our streets unsafe." I was instantly struck by his radically different attitude towards two groups of people who live in very similar realities. It would be an understatement to say that Polish cities are no safer than the south side of Minneapolis - the difference is that they are an ocean away, and so the pain does not cut as close; it is not as personal as having your car broken into or a friend's child wounded by a gunshot in the back yard. It's less of a challenge to love broken people and to see their beauty at a distance - like an occasional squirrel in the city park.

I wonder, however, if the depth and transformation that love is really about can ever truly happen at a distance - unless it begins in the back yard, in close community with others different than us who will occasionally eat our lettuce or bite through our roof.