You know how badly it floods outside our building every summer? The streets overflow with rainwater floating with garbage and sometimes it’s too deep for hummers. It hasn’t been this way for many years, you might remember, but it’s not like we’ve been here long. We’ve stripped and burned and paved away the nature and made it flat and lifeless, and who would have known that the cement couldn’t absorb all the water? Our building swells and rots because we didn’t make it right the first time. Serves us right, I guess. All the land that we raped and stole for the civilization used to belong to the animals. Those cute woodland creatures we don’t see anymore, but we remember seeing in the picture books our foster mothers read to us. My favourite was the story about the rabbits.
            The centre of the rabbit’s land was the parking lot complex across from us now. They lived easily enough, as they hadn’t been hit by these rains or human impact. One day, from the colder northern mountains came a white hare. The tundra he formerly called his home had changed too much for he and his band to live on. During relocating he was separated from his drove of hares. His search for companions found him this unlikely group of rabbits. He was much larger and all white in his arctic fur, with massive, strong legs and paws with longer claws in the front. Despite their differences, they accepted the hare into their community, but quickly he went about most oddly in their eyes. Instead of finding a mate, which is all these rabbits seemed to do, the hare went about making his den. And even in doing this, he went about it most diligently without pause or rest for days. He surveyed the area and considered wind and rainfall, soil stability and root growth. The other members did not consider much when they dug their homes ages ago, mostly just which of their favourite foods grew nearby. When it appeared that the Artic hare had completed his den, it was simply a slopped, constricted hall that tunnelled to one small, claustrophobic burrow. Behind his back they snickered and called it “squalid” and named him a “Spartan hare.”
        The rabbits thought the hare would now take a mate (though his construction was much too small for a family) and join them in their lives of insipid leisure-for really they did not do anything in particular. They lounged in the sun and ate throughout the day and gossiped to each other. The hare stared at the sky and sternly declined their invitations, and went about gathering a great store of food, which only garnered more pitying laughter from his peers. Glances of smiling condescension were exchanged as they watched him forge in the dirt, scrounging for meagre things like barks and roots-things that they had never needed to rely on, especially since there were much tastier, though less nutritious things to eat.
         Everyday he would stand on his hind legs and stare intently into the sky. Listening? By now the rabbits in his shadow believed that he was mad, but most messiahs are thought to be at first.
         Soon after, the hare asked if the rabbits would like to re-dig their warrens again in his supervision, and store food. What for? they asked. At that, the hare shot up one last time, and said nothing more than “so be it” and went into his hole and did not come out for several days. During this time, the rabbits noticed something in the colour of the sky and smells on the wind. By now, it was too late to run from the approaching hurricane, and too late to ask the stranger for help, as he collapsed the tunnel into his hideaway for his own protection. All they could do was follow suit and herd their large families into their warrens and try to wake up when the whole thing was over.
        Several more days passed before the arctic Spartan dug himself to the surface, and emerged from his shelter. He found the remnants of a land ravaged by a violent flood, feebly trying to recover. Where the rabbit warren was supposed to be only mud stirred under inches of water. With not a sign of lupine life, for the last time the hare raised up and paused. In an instant he jolted and bound southward far, far away, searching for a place where the strange weather did not touch the land.                
        You think we people could learn from that hare, and make our homes able to withstand whatever nature could throw our way, especially in our day and age. Course, this isn’t about living, it’s about money. For the rabbits, it was their leisure time that they couldn’t part with. Or maybe the rabbits should have learned from the hare and taken the advice given. Or just run away. Maybe we did learn from the hare: we abandon all hope and wipe our hands clean. Oh well. Eventually we’re going to run out of places to learn from and then we’ll be in a pickle, only able to shake our heads and say: “stupid rabbits.”