I just read this in a news­pa­per: “After long months of fu­tile at­tempts and sev­er­al ex­pe­di­tions, a group of Ar­gen­tine sci­en­tists has suc­ceed­ed in cap­tur­ing an Ushua­ia rab­bit, thought to be ex­tinct for over a cen­tu­ry. The sci­en­tists, head­ed by Dr. Adrián Bertoni, caught the rab­bit in one of the many forests that sur­round the Patag­on­ian city...”

As I pre­fer specifics to gen­er­al­i­ties, and pre­ci­sion to tran­sience, I would have said “in such and such a for­est lo­cat­ed in such a spot in re­la­tion to the cap­i­tal of Tier­ra del Fuego.” But we can’t ex­pect blood from a turnip or any in­tel­li­gence what­so­ev­er from jour­nal­ists. Dr. “Adrián Bertoni” is yours truly, and of course they had to mis­spell my name. My exact name is Andrés Bertol­di, and I am, in fact, a doc­tor of nat­ur­al sci­ences, spe­cial­iz­ing in Zo­ol­o­gy and Ex­tinct, or En­dan­gered, Species.

The Ushua­ia rab­bit is not ac­tu­al­ly a lago­morph, much less a lep­orid. It’s not even cer­tain that its habi­tat is the forests of Tier­ra del Fuego. More­over, not one has ever lived on the Isla de los Es­ta­dos. The rab­bit I caught—I alone, with no spe­cial equip­ment or help from any­one—showed up in the city of Buenos Aires near the em­bank­ment of the San Martín rail­road, which runs par­al­lel to Av­enue Juan B. Justo where it cross­es Soler Street in the dis­trict of Paler­mo.

Far from look­ing for the Ushua­ia rab­bit, I had other wor­ries and was head­ed down the side­walk of Juan B. Justo, a bit down­cast. It was hot, and I had some un­pleas­ant, not to say wor­ri­some, busi­ness to do at the bank on Santa Fe Av­enue. Be­tween the em­bank­ment and the side­walk there is a wire mesh fence sup­port­ed by a low wall; on the other side of the fence, I spot­ted the Ushua­ia rab­bit.

I rec­og­nized it in­stant­ly, how could I not? But I was struck by the fact that it re­mained so still, for this an­i­mal is nor­mal­ly jumpy and rest­less. I thought it might be wound­ed.

Be that as it may, I backed up a few me­ters, climbed the fence, and low­ered my­self cat­like to the ground. I ad­vanced stealth­ily, fear­ing at each mo­ment that the Ushua­ia rab­bit would take fright, and in that case, who could catch it? It is one of the fastest an­i­mals in cre­ation; though the chee­tah is swifter in ab­solute terms, it is not in rel­a­tive terms.

The Ushua­ia rab­bit turned and looked at me. Con­trary to my ex­pec­ta­tions, how­ev­er, it did not flee, but kept still, with the sole ex­cep­tion of the sil­ver tuft of feath­ers that shook as if to chal­lenge me.

I took off my shirt and wait­ed, stock still and bare-skinned.

“Easy, easy, easy...” I kept say­ing.

When I got close I slow­ly de­ployed the shirt as if it were a net, and sud­den­ly, in one quick swoop, I had it over the rab­bit, wrap­ping it up in a neat pack­age. Using the sleeves and the shirt­tail, I tied a strong knot, al­low­ing me to hold the bun­dle in my right hand and use my left to ne­go­ti­ate the fence once more and re­turn to the side­walk.

I could not, of course, show up at the bank shirt­less, much less with the Ushua­ia rab­bit. Thus I head­ed home. I have an eighth-floor apart­ment on Nicaragua Street, be­tween Car­ran­za and Bon­pland. At a hard­ware store I picked up a bird­cage of con­sid­er­able size.

The door­keep­er was wash­ing the side­walk in front of our build­ing. See­ing me bare-chest­ed, with a cage in my left hand and a rest­less white bun­dle in my right, he looked at me with more as­ton­ish­ment than dis­ap­proval.

As bad luck would have it, a neigh­bor fol­lowed me in from the street and into the el­e­va­tor. With her was her lit­tle dog, an ugly, dis­gust­ing an­i­mal. Upon pick­ing up the smell—un­no­ticed by human be­ings—of the Ushua­ia rab­bit, it erupt­ed in ear­split­ting barks. On the eighth floor I was able to rid my­self of that woman and her sten­to­ri­ous night­mare.

I locked the door with my key, pre­pared the cage, and with in­fi­nite care began un­wrap­ping the shirt, try­ing not to upset, or worse, to hurt the Ushua­ia rab­bit. How­ev­er, being shut in had an­gered it, and when I opened the cage door I couldn’t stop the rab­bit from hit­ting my arm with a stinger. I had suf­fi­cient pres­ence of mind not to let the pain in­duce me to let go, and I fi­nal­ly man­aged to ma­neu­ver it safe­ly back into the cage.

In the bath­room I washed the wound with soap and water, and, right away, with med­i­c­i­nal al­co­hol. It then oc­curred to me that I ought to head to the phar­ma­cy for a tetanus shot, which I did with­out wast­ing any time.

From the phar­ma­cy I went straight to the bank to con­clude the cursed busi­ness that had been post­poned be­cause of the Ushua­ia rab­bit. On the way back I picked up sup­plies.

Since it lacks a mas­ti­ca­to­ry ap­pa­ra­tus dur­ing the day, the most prac­ti­cal thing was to cut up the lights into lit­tle pieces and mix in some milk and chick­peas; I then stirred it all to­geth­er with a wood­en spoon. After sniff­ing the con­coc­tion, the Ushua­ia rab­bit ab­sorbed it with no prob­lem, just very slow­ly.

Its process of ex­pan­sion be­gins at sun­set. I there­fore trans­ferred the few pieces of liv­ing room fur­ni­ture—two mod­est arm­chairs, a loveseat, and an end table—to the din­ing room, push­ing them up against the din­ing table and chairs.

Be­fore it was too big to get past the door, I made sure it left the cage. Now free and com­fort­able, it was able to grow as need­ed. In this new state, it com­plete­ly lost its ag­gres­siv­i­ty, and now be­came ap­a­thet­ic and lazy. When I saw its vi­o­let scales pop out—a sign of sleepi­ness—I head­ed for the bed­room, went to bed, and called it a day.

The next morn­ing the Ushua­ia rab­bit had re­turned to the cage. In view of this docil­i­ty, I felt it was un­nec­es­sary to shut the door. Let it de­cide when to be in­side or out of its prison.

The in­stincts of the Ushua­ia rab­bit are in­fal­li­ble. Every evening it would leave the cage and ex­pand like a fair­ly thick pud­ding on the liv­ing room floor.

As is well known, its feces are pro­duced at mid­night on odd days. If one col­lects (in the spir­it of play, nat­u­ral­ly) these lit­tle green metal­lic poly­he­drons in a sack and shakes them, they make a love­ly sound, with a rather Caribbean rhythm.

To tell the truth, I have lit­tle in com­mon with Vane­sa Gonçalves, my girl­friend. She is con­sid­er­ably dif­fer­ent from me. In­stead of ad­mir­ing the many pos­i­tive qual­i­ties of the Ushua­ia rab­bit, she thought best to skin it in order to have a fur coat made for her­self. This can be done at night when the an­i­mal is elon­gat­ed and the sur­face of its skin is broad enough that the car­ti­lagi­nous ridges are dis­placed to the edges and don’t get in the way of the in­ci­sion and cut­ting. I did not want to help her do this op­er­a­tion. Armed with only dress­mak­ing scis­sors, Vane­sa re­lieved the Ushua­ia rab­bit of all the skin on its back. In the bath­tub, with de­ter­gent and run­ning water, a brush and bleach, she washed off any amber or bile that re­mained on the skin. Then she dried it with a towel, fold­ed it, put it in a plas­tic bag, and very hap­pi­ly took it off to her house.

It only takes eight to ten hours for the skin to com­plete­ly re­gen­er­ate. Vane­sa had vi­sions of a great scheme: each night she could skin the Ushua­ia rab­bit and sell its fur. I would not allow it. I did not want to con­vert a sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­ery of such im­por­tance into a vul­gar com­mer­cial en­ter­prise.

How­ev­er, an eco­log­i­cal so­ci­ety re­port­ed the deed, and a paid an­nounce­ment came out in the pa­pers ac­cus­ing “Va­le­ria González”—and, by as­so­ci­a­tion, me—of cru­el­ty to an­i­mals.

As I knew would hap­pen, the onset of au­tumn re­stored the rab­bit’s tele­path­ic lan­guage, and al­though its cul­tur­al mi­lieu is lim­it­ed, we were able to have agree­able con­ver­sa­tions and even to es­tab­lish a kind of, how shall I say, code of co­ex­is­tence.

The rab­bit let me know that it was not par­tial to Vane­sa, and I had no trou­ble un­der­stand­ing why. I asked my girl­friend not to come to the house any more.

Per­haps in grat­i­tude, the Ushua­ia rab­bit per­fect­ed a way of ex­pand­ing less at night, so that I was able to bring all the fur­ni­ture back to the liv­ing room. It sleeps on the loveseat and de­posits its metal­lic poly­he­drons on the rug. It never eats to ex­cess, and in this as in every­thing else, its con­duct is mea­sured and wor­thy of praise and re­spect.

The rab­bit’s del­i­ca­cy and ef­fi­cien­cy reached the ex­treme of ask­ing me what would be, for me, its ideal day­time size. I said I would have pre­ferred the size of a cock­roach, but I re­al­ized that such a small size put the Ushua­ia rab­bit in dan­ger of being stepped on (though not of being killed).

After sev­er­al at­tempts, we de­cid­ed that at night the Ushua­ia rab­bit would con­tin­ue to ex­pand to the size of a very large dog or even a leop­ard. Dur­ing the day, the ideal would be that of a medi­um-sized cat.

This al­lows me, when I am watch­ing tele­vi­sion, for ex­am­ple, to have the Ushua­ia rab­bit on my lap where I can stroke it ab­sent­mind­ed­ly. We have formed a solid friend­ship, and some­times we need only look at each other for mu­tu­al un­der­stand­ing. Nev­er­the­less, these tele­path­ic fac­ul­ties that func­tion dur­ing the win­ter months dis­ap­pear with the first warm spells.

We are now in the last month of win­ter. The Ushua­ia rab­bit is aware that for the next six months it will not be able to ask me ques­tions or make sug­ges­tions or re­ceive ad­vice or con­grat­u­la­tions from me.

Late­ly it’s fall­en into a kind of repet­i­tive mania. It tells me, as if I didn’t know, that it is the only sur­viv­ing Ushua­ia rab­bit in the world. It knows it has no way of re­pro­duc­ing, but—though I have asked many times—the rab­bit has never said whether it is both­ered by this or not.

More­over, the rab­bit con­tin­u­ous­ly asks me—every day and sev­er­al times a day—whether there is any use for it to go on liv­ing like this, alone in the world, with me yes, but with­out other crea­tures of its own kind. There is no way it can kill it­self, and there is no way I could—and even if there were, I would never do it—kill such a sweet, af­fec­tion­ate an­i­mal.

And so, as long as we ex­pe­ri­ence the last cold spells of the year, I con­tin­ue to con­verse with the Ushua­ia rab­bit, stroking it ab­sent­mind­ed­ly. When warm weath­er re­turns, I shall only be able to stroke it.