Was I exceeding the speed limit? Perhaps, but the rabbit should have known better. I have recently read arguments that evolution progresses at a much faster pace than previously assumed, so why hasn’t the rabbit, and for that matter the armadillo, skunk, opossum, raccoon, deer, and the red racer snake (Why that snake specifically? Different story, different park)  evolved to avoid traffic? Should not the trait of identifying the roar of the internal combustion engines have been passed on by surviving members of Lepus Californicus? I am aware of the Latin nomenclature of our victim because just prior to exploding on the hood and windshield of my 2009 Ford Flex it froze mid-leap, the Latin text appearing parenthetically beneath its protracted form. In the clichéd parlance of action movies the dulcet sound of Maria Callas melodically singing Casta Diva accompanied the rabbit’s slow-motion leap and was abruptly interrupted by the rapid thunk of death, the squeal of tires, and everyone in the car repeatedly screaming “oh shit!” Well almost everyone. I screamed. My wife, Colette, screamed and averted her eyes. My son laughed uproariously at whatever was playing on his phone. I hope.

 The stopping distance was not great, but I clearly remember intestine rolling up the windshield like a bizarro Wacky Wall Walker. A pointillist portrait of death in yellows and browns dominated the view, but I could not get enough distant to fully comprehend what I was looking at. While we were planning an exciting day of trekking about the desert, I had become the bringer of death. Whatever the rest of the day would be like, I knew from the visage of viscera before me that it would be nothing like A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

 The drive from Marathon, TX, a lovely town with a segregated cemetery, to the Panther Junction visitor center in Big Bend National Park is 66.2 miles and luckily the park service had decided to place the Persimmon Gap visitor center near the entrance of the park.  It is open seasonally from November to April, which means it was closed during our visit in July. Yep, we decided to visit the desert of Southwest Texas in July where at one point the dashboard thermometer read 116 degrees. It was a dry heat so . . . the bunny bits were rapidly baking like an egg on the sidewalk in a local news segment.  While the center was closed there were trash receptacles placed outside. Four brown metal bins with bear proof latches and heavy lids. Because we were planning on camping during portions of our trip we were carrying rolls of paper towels, and because we rarely clean out the car I was able to dig out a couple of plastic grocery bags to use as gloves. With the help of Colette pointing out various globs of guts that I had missed while suppressing my urge to empty the contents of my stomach into the stench stew on the hood of the car, I was able to remove most of the remains.

 The rest of the trip was hot, but lepuscide free. I don’t recall seeing another rabbit anywhere in the park. Actually, going over the catalog of forensic evidence in my mind, I don’t know if I can definitively state that there were rabbit remains on the car. Perhaps, memory being what it is, I have merely photoshopped Lepus Californicus over a more sinister series of events. Maybe it was a hare that I killed maybe it was . . . El Chupacabra.