But once I rolled down the hill and turned onto C Street, where it got all dark and empty along the woods, I spotted something in the road. Right smack dab in the middle of the road, right in my headlights in front of the car, was the CABBIT again. Holy cow. You cant imagine. You see, the cabbit had become somewhat of an obsession for me and Jax. We would spot it all over the neighborhood, always when we would least expect it. When we were just casually walking home late at night, lost in thought, it would dart across the lawn or we would spot it over behind the dumpsters up at the schoolyard or even if we happened to be deep in the woods in the Park, we would see it. We never expected it. It would always catch us off-guard. The cabbit was this kind of hybrid between a plain old domestic run of the mill house cat and a woodland rabbit. Thats how it looked anyway. Im not sure if thats exactly how it evolved or anything but it had the head of a rabbit with those big floppy ears and wriggly nose and the body of a tomcat. The real startling thing though was, if we were lucky enough to have it unexpectedly pop up in front of us some night, was its cotton tail. It had a puffy cottontail. Im totally serious. The first time Jax and I spotted the thing we honestly were pretty freaked out by it. We were scared of it. It just didnt look natural and those floppy ears and bushy cotton tail just werent all that soothing when the damn thing popped out in front of us from behind the trash dumpsters that were lined up over by the basketball courts at Long Hill School. We just werent expecting it. Sure, a cat or raccoon would startle us too, if it just popped up, but the cabbit and the way it looked, gave us a very different feeling when it kind of startled us that one night when we werent expecting it. It was grey, which was normal enough, and had four white paws, again just like any run of the mill house cat, but that rabbit head with the big floppy ears and twitchy nose and that bushy bright white cotton tail were really startling. Even if it didnt surprise us one night in the dark, even if it was daytime, it would still freak us out if we saw it. Anyone would freak out. If we were sitting in our warm, fully lit living room and someone came in with this covered cage and warned us that they were going to show it to us, we still would have been kind of freaked out by it and gotten startled. But we couldnt help being vaguely curious about it too. We just were curious about it and couldnt help being totally obsessed with it. We only had to see it once. Thats all. Just once. And we were hooked and couldnt wait to see it again. Im sure you would be too and might even find yourself wandering around the neighborhood in the middle of the night or up at the schoolyard in the pitch black or out behind the strip mall just hoping it would pop up or dart across your path. I cant even tell you how many times after that first spotting that me and Jax would meet up during the week, late, late at night and wander aimlessly around just hoping it would scurry out from under a bush or car or somewhere. And you know what? After a month or so of aimlessly skulking around behind different peoples houses in the middle of the night or out near their trashcans or somewhere, we saw the fucking thing again. We actually spotted it again. I mean now we were really hooked. After the first sighting, when we hadnt seen it for a month or so, we actually began to doubt that we had ever even seen it in the first place. Sure, I know we saw something that first night, but I honestly think that we both started to think that maybe all we saw really was just a cat with a big head and some white thing stuck on its ass. I honestly can say that we began to think we imagined it. But man, when we saw it a second time, now we were hooked and really just became kind of obsessed with the damn thing. We couldnt help it. If you never saw it, you really would think we were absolutely nuts. You honestly would think we both had a screw loose. But once you saw it, I know for sure, you would be hooked and obsessed and couldnt wait until it popped up again somewhere. Just the way those proportionally huge ears bobbed around when it walked or the tail that was just so puffed out and afro-like, stuck there on its ass, all bright white and all. That was usually the last thing you would be able to make out as it disappeared back into the bushes or behind the trashcanits puffy afro-ass tail. I even tried to sketch it a couple of times, but not necessarily being gifted in art by any stretch of the imagination, it just came out looking like a mental cases idea of a joke or a nightmare or something. If you saw my drawings of it, which I do still keep, you really would just feel sorry for me and want me safely locked up somewhere. They were THAT bad. They honestly were. So you can imagine how pumped I was when I rounded the corner and it was just sitting there looking at me in the middle of C Street. I turned the radio off and just let the car idle and for the five seconds or so before it took off, I just stared at it, trying to take it all in. Needless to say Jax or me never, ever told a soul about this whole cabbit thing. But in private it really was kind of an obsession. When we talked about it, after checking the house to make absolutely sure no one was around, we would go on about it for hours, trying to guess where it lived, its habitat, and how it came about. We were going on missions to the library trying to look up articles about it and leaving with stacks of books on cats and rabbits, which werent much help at all, as you can imagine.
Beeping the horn in front of Jaxs, I couldnt wait for him to get in the car so I could quickly spin around and we could both go see if we could spot it again. It seemed like forever for him to come out and I was so excited and had spent every second waiting imagining the cabbit disappearing further and further away that when he was halfway across his lawn I kind of whisper-shouted Cmon, I saw it. He froze. I didnt even have to say what it was. He knew. He already knew exactly what it was I was talking about. It had been a while, a few days even, since either of us had even mentioned it, but he knew instantly. Oh fuck, wait, he shout-whispered back. Jax!, I now fully vocalized to his back as he disappeared into his house. I was panicking. We spent months talking and drawing up the cabbits probable diet and weeks in his basement developing carefully thought-out traps and methods of possible containment. Drawings and diagrams and theories were re-worked, revised, or disregarded altogether in what we fashioned into a type of cabbit war room behind the washer and dryer alongside the oil tank in his basement. We went through what has until now been a fruitless trapping stage and heated discussions on the proper and most enticing bait, returning from the mall with bags and bags of assorted cat toys, salt wheels, and plastic vegetables that Jax would secretly hide in the crisper draw of his parents refrigerator to scent them for weeks before field testing. He was convinced that given the proper enticement the cabbit could be trapped. He came out around the back of the house running with something and as he gained momentum he either lost his footing or tripped on something, but went down like a rock and did an anything but graceful face plant right in the middle of his yard. But he didnt care, he picked up what he ran back in to get and was so excited that he didnt even seem to notice the mud and grass in his mouth and on his teeth. I cant blame him. I was excited too and was rocking back and forth and giggling my legs and revving the accelerator the entire time I was waiting. My stomach was actually upset I was so anxious. Whats that fucking thing? I asked him, losing patience. He had a ski pole with about a dozen baby carrots and catnip mice tied to its rubber basket end with six-inch or so pieces of black thread. We had argued about this sort of thing in the past. Oh, we had carried on many times. A Radio Shack remote control radio flying helicopter he had modified into something that would somehow fling out and disperse, with honestly almost scary force, a grounded lettuce and carrot and rabbit pellet mixture, launching it behind dumpsters and trashcans, had us rolling around on the floor of his living room until the collar was ripped off my shirt and his moms entirely coincidental porcelain woodland creature figurine collection, that in fact did include 2 or 3 rabbits, was knocked off its display table and lay scattered on the carpet. So I was careful how I reacted to his ski pole thing. Im going to wave this around in front of us, its perfect! He began to slowly and methodically demonstrate a strange type of tai chi influenced movement he developed alongside the car and door I had left open. Knowing how much thought had gone into this and generally wanting him to just get in the fucking car, I just wisely said, Cool, cmon lets go. The direction it ran away from when I first saw it could only have meant that it was probably and realistically heading up to the schoolyard. It had to be. So we quickly drove over there and if only I hadnt been so excited and had remembered to disengage the parking brake, the carrot and catnip scented dangly ski pole thing probably would have worked better, but as we set out from the schools back parking lot towards the dumpsters, the smell of burnt rubber coming from the car had no problem overpowering any hint of the catnip and carrots. The brakes really stunk. I was so excited and my stomach had so many butterflies that it almost made me vomit, if you really want to know the truth. I almost threw up next to the backstop. And that fucking cloud of blue rubbery smoke seemed to be following us. Jax wouldnt even look at me and I swear I heard him mutter fuckhead as he stopped for a second to untangle some of the threads. I let it go though as we were both now in a type of tunnel vision, just so focused on the battery of dumpsters across the basketball court. Jax? a girls voice shouted, causing us to jump. We had been so focused and in such a type of tunnel vision that we must have walked by, not even 3 feet away from us, his younger sister and what I assume was her boyfriend. Unbeknownst to us, they were sitting in the dark, right up against the building, out of any light whatsoever and because, like I mentioned we were just so intensely focused on those dumpsters, we didnt even see them. At all. Man, I jumped a mile, let alone Jax who dropped his bait and was now on his hands and knees trying to reattach the basket to the pole. What are you doing? she snapped. The way she said it made it sound like we were completely crazy and that she wasnt at all curious about why we were there. Thinking about it later, in the car on the way to Sinces, they were both disheveled probably because they most likely had been making out and we startled them and that was why she had been so mean and said all those things about homos and retards and family embarrassment and everything. So the more I thought about it and calmed down, I really couldnt blame her for even throwing those pretty good size rocks at us as we ran back to the car. I honestly couldnt blame her. And man, the guy with her wasnt all that happy or talkative in the least when we all had to walk the 20 minutes or so to his house so he could get his parents car to give me and Jax a jump, as I had, also in my excitement and in the type of hysteria that the cabbit induces, left the lights on the entire time it took Jax to calm his sister down and at least get her to stop screaming at us.
Beeping the horn in front of Jaxs, I couldnt wait for him to get in the car so I could quickly spin around and we could both go see if we could spot it again. It seemed like forever for him to come out and I was so excited and had spent every second waiting imagining the cabbit disappearing further and further away that when he was halfway across his lawn I kind of whisper-shouted Cmon, I saw it. He froze. I didnt even have to say what it was. He knew. He already knew exactly what it was I was talking about. It had been a while, a few days even, since either of us had even mentioned it, but he knew instantly. Oh fuck, wait, he shout-whispered back. Jax!, I now fully vocalized to his back as he disappeared into his house. I was panicking. We spent months talking and drawing up the cabbits probable diet and weeks in his basement developing carefully thought-out traps and methods of possible containment. Drawings and diagrams and theories were re-worked, revised, or disregarded altogether in what we fashioned into a type of cabbit war room behind the washer and dryer alongside the oil tank in his basement. We went through what has until now been a fruitless trapping stage and heated discussions on the proper and most enticing bait, returning from the mall with bags and bags of assorted cat toys, salt wheels, and plastic vegetables that Jax would secretly hide in the crisper draw of his parents refrigerator to scent them for weeks before field testing. He was convinced that given the proper enticement the cabbit could be trapped. He came out around the back of the house running with something and as he gained momentum he either lost his footing or tripped on something, but went down like a rock and did an anything but graceful face plant right in the middle of his yard. But he didnt care, he picked up what he ran back in to get and was so excited that he didnt even seem to notice the mud and grass in his mouth and on his teeth. I cant blame him. I was excited too and was rocking back and forth and giggling my legs and revving the accelerator the entire time I was waiting. My stomach was actually upset I was so anxious. Whats that fucking thing? I asked him, losing patience. He had a ski pole with about a dozen baby carrots and catnip mice tied to its rubber basket end with six-inch or so pieces of black thread. We had argued about this sort of thing in the past. Oh, we had carried on many times. A Radio Shack remote control radio flying helicopter he had modified into something that would somehow fling out and disperse, with honestly almost scary force, a grounded lettuce and carrot and rabbit pellet mixture, launching it behind dumpsters and trashcans, had us rolling around on the floor of his living room until the collar was ripped off my shirt and his moms entirely coincidental porcelain woodland creature figurine collection, that in fact did include 2 or 3 rabbits, was knocked off its display table and lay scattered on the carpet. So I was careful how I reacted to his ski pole thing. Im going to wave this around in front of us, its perfect! He began to slowly and methodically demonstrate a strange type of tai chi influenced movement he developed alongside the car and door I had left open. Knowing how much thought had gone into this and generally wanting him to just get in the fucking car, I just wisely said, Cool, cmon lets go. The direction it ran away from when I first saw it could only have meant that it was probably and realistically heading up to the schoolyard. It had to be. So we quickly drove over there and if only I hadnt been so excited and had remembered to disengage the parking brake, the carrot and catnip scented dangly ski pole thing probably would have worked better, but as we set out from the schools back parking lot towards the dumpsters, the smell of burnt rubber coming from the car had no problem overpowering any hint of the catnip and carrots. The brakes really stunk. I was so excited and my stomach had so many butterflies that it almost made me vomit, if you really want to know the truth. I almost threw up next to the backstop. And that fucking cloud of blue rubbery smoke seemed to be following us. Jax wouldnt even look at me and I swear I heard him mutter fuckhead as he stopped for a second to untangle some of the threads. I let it go though as we were both now in a type of tunnel vision, just so focused on the battery of dumpsters across the basketball court. Jax? a girls voice shouted, causing us to jump. We had been so focused and in such a type of tunnel vision that we must have walked by, not even 3 feet away from us, his younger sister and what I assume was her boyfriend. Unbeknownst to us, they were sitting in the dark, right up against the building, out of any light whatsoever and because, like I mentioned we were just so intensely focused on those dumpsters, we didnt even see them. At all. Man, I jumped a mile, let alone Jax who dropped his bait and was now on his hands and knees trying to reattach the basket to the pole. What are you doing? she snapped. The way she said it made it sound like we were completely crazy and that she wasnt at all curious about why we were there. Thinking about it later, in the car on the way to Sinces, they were both disheveled probably because they most likely had been making out and we startled them and that was why she had been so mean and said all those things about homos and retards and family embarrassment and everything. So the more I thought about it and calmed down, I really couldnt blame her for even throwing those pretty good size rocks at us as we ran back to the car. I honestly couldnt blame her. And man, the guy with her wasnt all that happy or talkative in the least when we all had to walk the 20 minutes or so to his house so he could get his parents car to give me and Jax a jump, as I had, also in my excitement and in the type of hysteria that the cabbit induces, left the lights on the entire time it took Jax to calm his sister down and at least get her to stop screaming at us.