There Once Was a Man from Nantucket

In this case his name is Harvey, and he is, as Rabbit Junior said, “a totally awesome guy”.

Limericks aside, Harvey demonstrated what I have consistently tried to teach to the young rabbits and anyone else who will listen: it is not that hard to do the right thing. Of course, sometimes that’s subjective, but often, it’s pretty straightforward. This was.

On Sunday night, Rabbit Junior left the Red Sox hat that my late husband had bought for him in a movie theatre. I tried not to get upset, it was only a hat, after all, and I tend to place too much importance on the handful of things we have from my late husband, for they are just things. I did a pretty good job too, but we kept checking back to see if there was anyone at the cinema all the next day so that we could try to retrieve it. Like all island movie houses, resurrected from days of yore, the Dreamland Theatre is not staffed until shortly before their first showing. This did not occur before our ferry would be leaving the island.

As we headed down to the ferry dock, the bicycle shop owner who had been part of the whaleboat crew my team had crushed the day before hailed me and the rabbits on the street. We joked for a few minutes, and then I asked if he knew how to reach the theatre owners. He said they were impossible to reach, asked what we needed, and proceeded to take detailed notes on the hat, my son’s name, and our phone number.

Last night he called and said simply, “Where should I send the hat?”

Post Script: I will also tell you that Harvey gave complimentary bicycles to the members of my crew on the morning of the whaleboat race. Now he may just have been hoping to tire them out so that they would lose . . . but I don’t think so.