Bunny tale an Easter `miracle’

Here comes Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail, when wham, he’s run over by a car. The day before Easter, even. It’s all right, though — like most strange, but true, holiday stories, this one has a happy ending.

Laura Fortin of Levant, a nurse in the dialysis unit at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor, was on her way to work in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday morning when she noticed something had darted in front of her car while she was traveling through Hermon. It was dark outside, she didn’t see what it was, and she didn’t see it in the road behind her, according to a colleague, Dorothy Williams.

Later in the trip, she heard a noise that sounded like a baby crying. Then, it happened again.

When Fortin arrived at work, she looked for whatever it was that she apparently had hit and, presumably, was making those strange noises.

Nothing.

An outpatient who later agreed to check under the car for her found some fur hanging out from the engine area. When he looked under the hood, he discovered that the fur was attached to a fat, unharmed, white-and-black pet rabbit feasting contentedly on blades of grass.

The animal was, however, stuck in the wheel well between the engine and the headlight, and had been, well, a hare’s breadth from the rotating fan belt. Peter — or “Easter” if you go by the nurse’s name for it — rested there for about three or four hours before finally being removed by a mechanic at a nearby service station.

Although it’s possible the animal was in its hideaway before Fortin left for work Saturday morning, those who attended to the rabbit this weekend believe the situation is nothing less than an Easter miracle.

As Williams and Fortin tried to find the owner of the rabbit, which suffered only a small abrasion on its back, the bunny was kept in a box in Williams’ car. Williams took the rabbit home and as of Sunday afternoon, was holding the pet until its owner could be determined.