The Hare in the Air Meets the Pound on the Ground

See Jack Jump, See Chuk Run

Living in a zoo isn't necessarily safe for the animals interned there. Unsupervised little boys may pitch rocks at them, and sometimes adults cannot resist offering them saturated fatladen foods, despite signs that say they are on a supervised diet. Sometimes the danger comes from a fellow in the compound with them. The hare in the air is an Arizona black-tailed jackrabbit, known in scientific circles as Lepus californicus. The pound on the ground - that's what they weigh - is a chukar, Alectoris graeca chukar. Although the Arizona Exhibit at the Phoenix Zoo is restricted to animals (birds are considered animals, too) contingent to Arizona, the chukar is a nonnative. It was imported decades ago from the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal and released in the wilds by the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Unlike nonnative Homo sapiens who like to shovel snow, chukars never get homesick. They love Arizona's low humidity. They have feathered their nests here, are fruitful, and are multiplying. Jackrabbits can, under duress, hit 45 mph. That's their only means of defense. Speed. That is, unless they take on members of their own species. At those times, they sit on their hind legs and punch out each other like boxers, but they never hit below the belt.While on the run, after a given number of hops, Jack's curiosity overtakes it, and it jumps as high as six feet and floats across 18 feet of territory. While it is up there, it takes a look at the surrounding territory and what may be in it, like a wily coyote. (On seeing one, Jack might like to change his midair course but cannot due to reasons only a physics professor can explain.) The chukar, having wings, can fly even higher into the atmosphere. Like Arizona's Gambel's quail, it prefers walking or running to flying. It is not one to waste any motion, thus rarely climbs above 12 feet. On the ground, legging it, it's capable of 17 mph. For defense, it has a sharp beak, but it's not the sort of thing you pass legislation against.

Phoenix Zoo officials do not deliberately match a chukar against a jackrabbit. This special event was orchestrated by the chukar, itself. Some blame the event on paranoia resulting from the everyday sameness of zoo food and being downwind from a hamburger stand. If jackrabbits could talk, and you asked Jack how the air was up there, he'd no doubt say, "Safer than down there."

For apparently no reason understood by anyone with an upwardly mobile intelligence, Chuk (pronounced Chuck), with a deliberate John Wayne attack-swagger in its stride, moved toward Jack, who was dozing in the warm morning sun. These days nothing will get you on your feet faster than being pecked robustly between the eyes. Jack not only got up, but WAY UP. I mean, put yourself in Jack's place. What would you have done and thought? Well, so did Jack. But Chuk was simply not happy seeing onetime shock and bewilderment on Jack's whiskery face. It wanted more. Some unseen, unknown force drove it, and we can only suspect that maybe Stephen King had recently visited the Phoenix Zoo's Arizona Exhibit. With Chuk continuing in hot pursuit, Jack kept jumping and jumping in desperate attempts to flee harm's way. Until Chuk backed Jack into a corner. Then, for perhaps the first time ever, a jackrabbit punched out a chukar. Jack socked Chuk right in the beak. Not once but several times in quick succession. Chuk took on a quizzical expression, as though he had come out of a trance, and any witness with insight got the impression he was thinking, "What am I doing, attacking a jackrabbit?" He backed away. All species on this planet are common in that they are reduced to two absolutes: 1) they fight only with their own kind; 2) they use other species for food. This question will not go away: was Chuk myopic or hungry?

Phoenix-based James Tallon, hoping what he encountered would not be strictly for the birds, was fortunate enough to be at the Phoenix Zoo at the right time to photograph this unusual encounter between a jackrabbit and a chukar.