Last week my dog killed a rabbit. It appeared in the afternoon by the shed, when the garden was swimming in sticky sunlight, poked its little nose out from behind the blue steel box and sniffed the air. With the sun and the wispy clouds and the translucent moon behind it, it bounced forwards tentatively, stopping to glance around and sniff the grass. I watched it from a few metres away. I sat on my heels and twirled the grass between my fingers.

It bit the weeds and whirled the green between its little teeth like a washing machine spin cycle. I watched from the deck. I wondered where it had come from. My neighbour has four grey rabbits that dance around the streets after sundown. She doesn’t keep them locked up. I find them, always in a group, still as statues on the road or on the grass outside my house. Eyes red, noses twitching, tall ears like upright soldiers, alert. Once when I was driving home I turned the corner to see them poised on the road, staring at me. They were lit up by the beaming headlights, swathed in a cold grey mist, as alive and ghostly as Stonehenge. We looked at each other for several moments before they scampered away. This one wasn’t one of those.