7/15/26

This is George. He’s a baby bunny who showed up during the first heat wave a few weeks ago and has taken up residence (along with his mother) in the space beneath the front porch previously occupied by an albino possum, and then Josie and her kittens, and then another possum after that. George was either an only child, or the rest of his siblings have already left home. He spends his days between my yard and the neighbor’s yard, busily munching on clover. His mother keeps her distance, but George has no fear of humans — something which I’d hoped to nip in the bud, simply for his own survival. But despite stomping my foot and making sudden movements and noises, George just sort of meanders a foot or so away, as if to say “Who are you kidding, dude? Everybody knows you saved 38 kittens plus a mom, and you’re a friend to possums and deer. You ain’t gonna do anything.” I have, however, noticed that when a hawk or an eagle passes overhead, he’s so fast getting under the porch that you’d think he was a Tasmanian devil. Hard to see it in this pic, but he’s got a little white patch of fur in the middle of his forehead.

I didn’t plant a garden this year, because I just didn’t have time, and we still have plenty of canned and frozen leftover from last year’s garden. Now, in hindsight, I’m glad I didn’t, because I’d have let him run riot over it.

Speaking of rabbits…

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Women In Horror Year: Day 83

Rabbits In The Garden by Jessica McHugh

Paperback

Twelve-year-old Avery Norton is head over heels in love with her best friend. With Paul Dillon at her side, she's invincible against the slippery roofs of Martha's Vineyard gingerbread houses, indifferent to sermons from her overprotective mother, Faye, and excited for another buoyant summer on the island.

According to the staff at Taunton Asylum, she's also a crazed killer.

After uncovering a gruesome secret in her basement, Avery tumbles down a rabbit hole of death, doubt, and deception that leads to her incarceration in Taunton Asylum and threatens to keep her separated from Paul forever. But the more she learns about her past and the matriarch of the Norton family, the more she realizes how much danger she and Paul are in.

From Bram Stoker Award Nominee, Jessica McHugh, the twisted mind behind The Green Kangaroos and Nightly Owl, Fatal Raven, Rabbits in the Garden begins Avery Norton's horrifying journey to unearth the truth about her past and the woman who raised her to be a good little gardener.

Like other genres, Horror has plenty of subgenres. Quiet Horror. Extreme Horror. Cosmic Horror. Splatterpunk. Folk Horror. Supernatural Horror. Psychological horror. Etc all. I don’t know if there’s an official subgenre that deals with terrible, gaslighting mothers, but if so, then it’s left hand holds Laurel Hightower’s The Day of the Door (which I reviewed here) and it’s right hand holds Rabbits In The Garden by Jessica McHugh.

A coming-of-age story, Rabbits In The Garden sort of subconsciously follows the same structure as Stephen King’s It — starting in the now with an adult protagonist and then jumping back in time to when she was twelve years old. But that is where all similarities between the two end. The former is a doorstop of supernatural horror. Rabbits In The Garden is a streamlined psychological thriller that owes more to the gothics than it does to It, or similar books (such as Summer of Night or my own Ghoul). It’s violent, at times, but Jessica keeps the gore and grue subdued, focusing instead on the psychological and emotional ramifications of what’s happening, and that makes for a chillingly effective — and at times utterly heartbreaking — read.

Rabbits In The Garden went out of print earlier this year, along with a bunch of other excellent books, after the dissolution of the publisher. However, copies are still readily available for cover price on the secondary market, in paperback here, including signed paperbacks from Vortex here. Very much worth tracking down now, before the price inevitably jumps as Jessica’s audience continues to deservedly grow.