In Metro Detroit, the night before Halloween is called Devil’s Night. Bad kids go around throwing toilet paper in the trees, egging people’s houses, or, in the neighborhoods of downtown Detroit City, burning houses down. On Halloween morning you always ventured outside nervously to investigate the aftermath. If your house was vandalized, you felt the phantom hate. Some invisible people were punishing you for some unknown thing.
Unlike normal families, we had bunnies for pets when I was a kid. Butterscotch was a doe; Thumper, a buck. Thus we had to keep them in separate cages, because there was no such thing as spaying and neutering your bunnies back then. Their hutches were out behind the garage in our suburban backyard, as was our little mini vegetable garden. I used to go back there and imagine I was a farmer. It was a nice escape from the misery of just being an 11-year-old kid with bunnies as pets, who played the flute and collected Barbra Streisand memorabilia and thought gnomes were real.
One Halloween Day back then I went out behind the garage to feed the rabbits their pellets… and my heart stopped. Butterscotch and Thumper’s his-and-her hutch doors were hanging open. They were gone. I immediately divined that someone had cased the joint, and then maliciously let my pets escape as a particularly nasty Devil’s Night prank.
My mom and brother and I searched the whole neighborhood. I ran from yard to yard, jumping fences where necessary, full of adrenaline, calling out for Butterscotch and Thumper, even though, of course, bunnies don’t come when you call. We couldn’t find them. How could anyone be so cruel? I asked through my tears.
Later that day my mom burst in to my room where I was grieving and said, “Scottie, come out here!” I followed her and when we walked through the side door of the garage, there were Butterscotch and Thumper…
Lying languidly next to each other, panting contentedly. If bunnies could smoke, they would’ve been having a cigarette.
We never thought to look for them that close to their cages! They must have dashed away from their opened hutches and hopped in the open side door of the garage. The garage: Where they could finally be alone, with some privacy.
Soon we were blessed with a litter of baby bunnies. They were adorable! When they got big enough we took them out to a farm in the country. It being Michigan, the farm family probably ate them.
After this Halloween trick I had an even darker view of the world, which I already thought was a real shit-fest of disappointments. I knew now that there were miscreants out there who would target innocent bunnies just to be mean.
The next year on Devil’s Night we put the rabbit hutches in the garage and locked all the doors.
I gave Butterscotch and Thumper a bunch of extra pellets that night, as well as some carrots and apples… after all, it was their anniversary!
Tags: Detroit, Devil's Night
