CATEGORY: SAILING

We have now returned to the boat after a nine mile hike.  We hiked just to the edge of American Camp and back although, on the way back, we took a short cut through the golf course.  It turned out to be the most difficult part of the walk because there were holes in the ground everywhere: not just on the green.  They were made by the numerous small animals that inhabit San Juan Island.  There are rabbits, rabbits, rabbits, rabbits and rabbits.  These were imported to the island in the early years where they throve and multiplied, multiplication being the mathematical exercise at which they are most proficient.  There are also some foxes, cats and eagles, which one might assume are there because they find rabbit an easy delicacy, but such is not the case as you will see.

Now you may think, especially since Watership Down, that there is nothing new to learn about rabbits, but you have never seen rabbits until you have seen San Juan Island rabbits.  When rabbits in other countries are looking for new frontiers of wealth and freedom, they pack up their kit bags and catch the first tramp steamer to this island where the rabbit is supreme.  It is the El Dorado of Rabbitdom: where champagne and caviar come with labels written only in Rabbitese.

The rabbits here have a season on foxes, and this is the time.  Everywhere we saw rabbits in red hats carrying their big fox guns.  When they shoot a fox, they cut off the feet and carry them around on their key chains for good luck charms.  In their homes, they have trophy rooms where they display cat tails and eagle claws too.  And it is rumored that one very large, exceedingly ruthless and ego-driven rabbit on this island even has a man-skin rug.

Affluent rabbitdom was especially apparent on the golf course, where the jet-set rabbits ride around in electric golf carts wearing fur golfing suits with matching hats.  They carry their one club in their right hind foot.  They indulge in all the frivolous pursuits of the idle rich: smoking and drinking and sensualizing all over the fairways at any time.

Their dexterity at combining all these hedonistic pleasures with golf is most amazing to watch.  I saw one of them hit a hole in one.  It was a spectacular feat that was accomplished due to the lightening speed of the multiplication ability that rabbits are most famous for.  An innocent young bachelor at the time he hit the ball, this player had, before the ball fell, produced grand children living in the vicinity of its descent, who, by noting the ball’s trajectory and gauging its arch were able, before it hit the ground, to dig a hole in the exact spot where it landed.  Yes, and put a flag in it too.  Some of the really fast young players can run and dig their own holes, but these are not the long hitters.

The females are not liberated, being always induced to produce large families, but it doesn’t matter.  There is not one of them that is not dripping with furs and dropping rabbit turds as big as diamonds all over the place.