Monsters of Ohio

It is a warm August evening in Ohio, the sun has just set, and you are a rabbit.

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You don’t know it’s August and you don’t know you’re in Ohio. You are a rabbit, and rabbits know nothing of human names for places or times. There is no August for you, and no months or weeks, just days rolling by, light and dark and sleep and awake. You’re more than a year old, so you’ve experienced the concept of seasons, and how things are green and then stop being green and then get cold and then warm and green again. Do you know how this works? No, you do not, because you’re a rabbit. You just know it does.

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Likewise, you neither know nor care about Ohio. In this you are no different than most creatures on the planet that possess any amount of sentience. It’s a blank spot for many and not even that for the rest. “Ohio” is a concept that doesn’t exist for you, nor does the country in which it resides, or the planet both of them happen to be on. These are all esoteric concepts that would be difficult to drop into your head and wouldn’t do you any good even if they managed to stick. What matters is the bit of land you’ve experienced and that you, in your own way, consider yours; your “neighborhood,” if you will, in which you live and forage and hide and sleep.

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You do know you’re a rabbit. “Rabbit” isn’t what you call yourself or others like you, obviously. Your name is a formless concept that means “you” but is not necessarily attached to a sound; likewise your idea of other rabbits—who exist in a category different from, say, raccoons or deer or dogs or cats or squirrels or humans or cars or any other things that you know—are part of your world but not you, either singular or plural.

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You know you’re a rabbit, and you know this about being a rabbit: Right now, it kind of fucking sucks.

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(And yes, rabbits absolutely fucking swear. You’re a prey animal, for fuck’s sake, and everything from hawks to riding mowers are trying to eat you every single moment you exist. You have narrowly avoided being eaten more times than you can count, and that’s not just because you have very little concept of aggregate numbers. If any animal deserves to fucking swear, it’s fucking you.)