A Waiting Game

 

The bunny sat perfectly still, knowing the hawk was perched just above. The slightest move would catch the bird’s attention, so there he sat, as still as a sock in a broken clothes dryer.

The warm summer breeze slightly ruffled his fur, whispering across the tall grass like a voice trying not to be heard. He resisted twitching even a single ear. His heart thudded a slow, deliberate rhythm—an old drumbeat passed down through generations of prey.

He knew he could outlast the hawk.

He’d practiced this as a kit, playing survival games with his brothers and sisters in the shadow of the an Oak tree. Freeze. Don’t blink. Don’t breathe too loud. Their mother had warned them with grave clarity: “Stillness saves lives.”

Above, the hawk let out a single cry—a sound that pierced the sky like a blade—and it shifted its talons on the branch. The bunny’s eye, wide and black like a polished stone, watched without moving. He did not panic. This was not fear—it was patience sharpened into instinct.

The shadow overhead drifted once, then again.

And then it was gone.

The bunny waited five more minutes, maybe six, because prey always waits. Only when the wind changed and the world settled did he allow himself a breath. One cautious paw moved forward. Then another.

Still alive.

Still here.

And that, in the world of rabbits, was everything.