"The stretch of ground from the edge of the town to the bull-ring was muddy.  There was a crowd all along the fence that led to the ring, and the outside of the balconies and the top of the bull-ring were solid with people....  Between the two fences of the runway the police were clearing the crowd along.  They walked or trotted on into the bull-ring.  Then people commenced to come running.  A drunk slipped and fell.  Two policemen grabbed him and rushed him over to the fence.  The crowd were running fast now.  There was a great shout from the crowd, and putting my head between the boards I saw the bulls just coming out of the street into the long running pen.  They were going fast and gaining on the crowd.  Just then another drunk started out from the fence with a blouse in his hands.  He wanted to do capework with the bulls.  The two policemen tore out, collared him, one hit him with a club, and they dragged him against the fence as the last of the crowd and the bulls went by.  There were so many people running ahead of the bulls that the mass thickened and slowed up going through the gate into the ring, and as the bulls passed, galloping together, heavy, muddy-sided, horns swinging, one shot ahead, caught a man in the running crowd and lifted him into the air.  Both the man's arms were by his sides, his head went back as the horn went in, and the bull lifted him and then dropped him...."

- Ernest Hemingway, "The Sun Also Rises"

     It's that time again.  Time for the 8-day San Fermin Fiesta and the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain.  It's been going on for over 400 years now.  Why should this year be any different? 
     Even as I write, young men are once again trying to prove their manhood by running faster than a bull.  I don't have to do that, but I guess not every man is fortunate enough to have a birth certificate with his gender clearly marked.

     My town has a similar festival.  It coincides with the Extremely Moveable Feast Day of the White Rabbit, though in recent times it's been more like a tea party than a feast.  Locals call what happens then el correring de los conejitos - the running of the bunnies.

     People come from all over Ohio to participate or to watch.  Old men.  Young toughs.  Women anxious for a chance to see the blood of a lowly bag boy spurting to the ground.  Some undergo induced labor this week just so their babies might count the running of the bunnies among their first sights on earth.

     I saw a few of the young toughs last night.  I was sitting in my local Dairy Doodle, enjoying a carrot shake dinner, when the voice of one of them carried over from the next table.
     "Hey, Papa - what's with the shake dinner?  Your mother not around to cut your meat for you?"
     He was trying to be amusing.  The toughs he was with seemed to think he was amusing.  I did not think he was amusing at all.  They all laughed.  I did not.  They laughed quite a while.  I sucked on the straw leading to my carrot shake.  I did not even grin.
     "I happen to be married and my wife cuts my meat for me just fine," I said evenly, wiping a bit of orange froth off my lips.
     The young toughs laughed harder.  It was clear that they were having trouble handling their first Pepsi's.
      "Fifty cents says that tomorrow it will be the bunnies that cut your meat," I heard a voice call out. 
     I stared evenly in the direction of the voice.  I had not been planning on giving a single bunny that chance.  Usually I spend the Extremely Moveable Feast Day of the White Rabbit getting drunk, demanding that the universe tell me what Faulkner had that I haven't got, and playing Russian roulette with a double-barreled shotgun, but fifty cents was fifty cents.
     And the not very clean, poorly lit Dairy Doodle had unbalanced my mind.
     "You're on," I quietly mumbled.
     As the young toughs laughed and cheered and promised to see my sorry ass ground into the mud come the morrow, I calmly sucked and sucked on my shake until the sounds of my slurping up the bottom-dwelling remnants of it finally succeeded in driving them all away.
    It had been a good shake.  Maybe my last.  I was glad I had paid the extra it had cost for it to have been made with the snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro.

     When people first hear about anything outside their experience, they tend to giggle.  Despite what you might think, they make no exception for the running of the bunnies.  For some reason, the affair strikes most outsiders as a joke, a gag, a "Stupid Human Trick" on the order of Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men." 
     Nothing could be further from the truth.
     First of all, real people are involved. 
     And very real bunnies.
     The very real President Carter was almost killed by a very real bunny when he went on a fishing trip once.  Only some quick action by his very, very real Secret Service agents saved him.  People tend to forget that. 
     Bugs Bunny outsmarted hunters, Western gunslingers, robots, even men from Mars.  Captain Kangaroo's Bunny Rabbit always managed to outsmart both the Captain and Mr. Moose.  Although none of these bunnies, people, and other creatures happen to have been real, they could have been.  Yet people tend to forget about them, too.
     Go figure, as Scott Fitzgerald might have said had he not blown all his talent on a single little novel.
     Seems we are all a lost generation when it comes to remembering the extreme danger presented by the Eastern Cottentail.

     The thing you have to keep in mind is that American bunnies are far more dangerous than Spanish bulls.  You especially have to keep it in mind if you chose to participate in the running of the bunnies and want to survive. 
     First of all, bunnies are far smaller than bulls, and thus much more easy to trip over.
     Second, the horns of a bull are obviously the most dangerous part.  It's far more difficult to determine what the most dangerous part of a bunny is, especially when it's charging.
     Third, one always knows that the bulls of Pamplona are headed straight towards the bull-ring.  Here, one never knows which way the bunnies might go next.  It's easy to get out of the way of instant death in Pamplona.  Here, the only way to get out of the way is to get out of the state, preferably days ahead of time.
     Finally, bulls have small ears.  Bunnies have much bigger ones.  Not only does this mean that bunnies can zero in on our screams much better than a bull as they move in for the kill, they can hide weapons in their ear canals far more easily than a bull can.  Switchblades, guns, even other, bigger bunnies have been found in the ears of bunnies in the runs of the recent past. 
     Who knows what horrors might await us in the runs to come?

     "You're not man enough - give it up!" the voice of the chief young tough entered my own very small ears as I stood in the mud with hundreds of other fools, waiting for the onslaught of brown-furred hell to arrive.  I started to reach for the birth certificate I always have with me, then thought it better to conserve my strength rather than waste any further time and energy on him. 
     I had to focus my mind.  Focus my mind on the approaching dust cloud.  Focus my mind on the first glimpse of a thousand pounding paws capable of digging up whole gardens in the blink of an eye.  Focus my mind on keeping the poor souls around me always and forever between my own personal body and the coming flash flood of haredom. 
     I nervously practiced my pushing and tripping abilities as I awaited my fate.
     I reviewed the checklist of Procedures For Proper Cowering which I had just ripped from a library book that very afternoon.
     And then, when no one was looking, I discreetly checked the cork I had rammed up my anus for the 11th time since leaving home.
     That's when the rocket went up and the bunnies were released.
     Next thing I knew I was in a hospital bed, screaming for Farmer McGregor....

     "Hi," my wife said, after I'd adjusted to sedation.  She was holding a hand.  My hand.  And smiling.  Smiling weakly.  Like a defeated old man at the sea.
     "Where's the rest of me?!" I demanded to know, panic-stricken once again as I looked down over the oddly flat sheets.
     "As near as we can tell, in some burrow of Canton," she whispered, giving my fingers an unfortunate rabbit-like squeeze. 
     I wasn't sure I heard her correctly.  The fluff of a hundred tails was still clogging my ears at that point.  But I knew what she was saying wasn't good.  I could tell that much.  I'm observant.  I know women.  And when a woman suddenly breaks down and cries all over your face while pounding the sheets with her fists, it's never good.  
     Well, hardly ever.
     "So... I didn't get the fifty cents?"
     She didn't say anything.  She couldn't look me in the eye.  Not good was just getting worse and worse.  I tried to take it like a man.
     "Those nasty, nasty animals," she whimpered.  "They even took your birth certificate!"
     I was stunned.  My birth certificate?
     "Thank goodness it was such a small one!  The doctors say they can fit you with a Post-It note with all the critical info on it that you need to get by.  Then, when you're able to start regular therapy in six months or so, you'll get a permanent replacement.  Not a certificate, exactly - more a memo page.  But there are so many colors you can choose from!  White. Yellow.  Even teak, which Cosmo says will be THE color come the fall.  It'll be ok.  You'll see.  Honey?"
     I said nothing.  What was there to say?  Easters would never be the same again.
     "Oh, Dan," she whimpered with lips close to what was left of my right ear.  "We could have had such a damned good time together.  If only those bunnies hadn't run so... so fast."
     A nurse had come in and was standing beside us, a raised hypodermic in her hand.  Her pushing a button to raise my bed was slowly pressing my bandaged face deeper and deeper into my wife's chest.
     "Yes," I said, spitting out a bit of lint or fur or another man's moustache, struggling to make myself heard.  "Isn't it pretty to think so?"