Yesterday, Ryan and I went to Shelby Farms for a quick taper workout on the CX bikes (I have a slightly sketchy short loop in/around the Spookycross course that I’ve been using for this type of practice). While we were warming up, we noticed three people in a grassy/wooded area holding a large cage with a little white bunny in it. We warmed up a little more, and the people took the bunny out of the cage and put it on the ground. We were almost done warming up, and they were walking away from the woods with an empty cage.

I realized what had just happened and confronted them about it.

Me: Did you just dump your pet rabbit in the woods?!?
Woman (smiling proudly): Yes, we let him loose back there.
Me: You know it’s going to die out here.
Woman (still smiling): Oh, No! Don’t say that!
Me: Yeah, he’s white, something will eat him. Probably today. Or he’ll starve.
Woman (still smiling like this is funny): No… that can’t happen, He’ll be fine!
Me: (ride towards the woods while they drive off)

I retrieved a tiny white & brown bunny from where it was trying to hunker down in a pile of leaves. By this time, Ryan was riding over. We searched the nearby information board for the number to the Ranger Station but couldn’t find one. I started cussing and wondering WTF I was going to do with the poor, cute little bunny.

BTW- For whatever reason, we didn’t take a photo of poor, cute little bunny, but it looked similar to this:

We racked our bikes and drove down to the Visitor’s Center. I expected the worst- I was fully expecting to walk in and the staff tell me they’d have to make a few phone calls, we’d end up having to take the rabbit to the humane society ourselves, and the whole thing would turn into a good-Samaritan-flavored pain in the neck.
Fortunately, when we walked in, the woman behind the desk melted as soon as she laid eyes on cute, poor, little abandoned bunny. I told her what happened and she immediately took it and hugged it up to her chest. She vowed to help it out or keep it herself in place of that cat she’d been thinking about adopting.

We GTFO back to the car before she changed her mind.

After that, my ride was good. Ryan’s ride wasn’t so good. Back at my sketchy course, we did a few hot laps. The final turn of my course is a left on some sketchy gravel. I was practicing riding like a jerk and making Ryan take undesirable lines around some of the turns & mudholes. We were head to head at the run-up stairs when he stumbled on a step. I took that as a cue to go faster. I heard him catching up to me a few seconds later, so I made myself large in an attempt to make him take the worst line possible through the sketchy gravel.

He wrecked really hard.

I looked over my shoulder and saw him sitting up, so I finished out my interval before riding back over to him. He was pretty beat up- I hosed the gravel and dirt off of his leg with a water bottle, and we finished out our workout. Luckily, he attributes his wreck mostly to excessive speed and poor course design.

Once we were home, I told him to think of cute, sweet little bunnies while I scrubbed the remaining dirt and rocks out of his leg and dressed it with gauze and tape. Cyclist luuuuv.