The Rabbit that Wasn’t

One thing I never expected to see in Newfoundland was a snowshoe hare. It wasn’t even on my radar. Instead, my hopes hung on seeing an iceberg or two, puffins and other cool birds, moose, and maybe some whales.

But rabbits, rather hares, weren’t even a blip. You might lump them together generally calling them rabbits, but they share only their family, Leporidae, while hares are classified in the genus Lepus, and cottontail rabbits are in Sylvilagus.

I’ve seen cottontail rabbits and jackrabbits, which are more akin to the hares, but never in my life imagined I’d see a snowshoe hare. In my mind, they are pure white in winter and live way up north in the Arctic. But here in Newfoundland, way south of there, was a large brown rabbit, appearing just outside its safe vegetated area.

As we were walking a trail behind a lighthouse, my friend called “snowshoe hare.” We froze and looked. I was skeptical, “What? No way.” He insisted and we looked harder. It was large, and seemed to have longer ears. But how could it be here? They were the stuff, along with penguins and polar bears, of picture books I’d see as a child, things I’d never see in my life.

It turns out he was right. I did some quick research and discovered that snowshoe hares have a huge range, which includes all of Canada, Alaska and mountainous areas of the lower 48. Boreal forests are very important to their survival. I was thinking of arctic hares, which truly live way up in the north and do not normally overlap with snowshoes, and are even larger than snowshoes.

The latter gets its name from its large feet, which help it navigate on deep snows. They are brown in summer, living in forested areas and munching on vegetation. Winter brings the change in coat to pure white, for camouflage from predators.

We watched our hare for a bit, until it retreated back into the wooded area.

I’ll always remember my one and only snowshoe hare.