The arrest this week of 61-year-old Alice Evans of Marathon, Florida for killing her 12-year-old Chihuahua might go some way to explain the media's blind animosity toward President Trump.

The dog, Big John Evans, had bitten her, the third bite this year, and, supposedly afraid of being bitten again, she strangled it and buried it in her backyard.  Weirder yet, when the police learned of the affair, they exhumed the body, performed an autopsy (yes, I know it's technically a necropsy) to verify the cause of death, and charged Alice with animal cruelty, and she wound up where she apparently still is as I write this: modeling an orange jumpsuit in the local lock-up while trying to raise $25,000 in bail money.

People do bizarre things, but strangling your Chihuahua has got to be right up there among the most curious.  She had had the pet twelve years, must have loved it because she gave it her family name, and there's been no report of her having abused it in any way in all that time – or, in point of fact, done bad things to any other four-legged creature, ever.

But it gave her another little nip, described as smaller than a pencil eraser, and she choked the life out of it.   

And a parallel struck me: a man who, many years ago, kept trying to kill his rabbit.

A fellow manager years ago walked into my office and said he knew I had children, and since his wife had left him several weeks before, he wondered if I wanted the animal.  A giant rabbit complete with cage, water dish, rabbit toys, and a supply of rabbit food.

It seemed a fit.  My wife and I were raising the children in a rural location with plenty of animals – cat, dog, pony, turtles, chickens, and what have you.  So, long story short, just as it was getting dark that afternoon, I followed the directions he gave me and pulled into the drive of a nicely appointed High Ranch on a quiet road near Woodstock, New York.  I knocked on the door, and a quavering voice told me to come in, and I found him seated at the kitchen table, no lights on in the gathering darkness and staring off into space.  In a cracking voice, he told me where the rabbit and cage were in the basement and explained that he didn't want to help me because he didn't know what the thing could or would do to him once he realized he was being given away. 

"I've already tried to kill it several times" he told me in a matter-of-fact voice, because "powers from beyond the grave had gathered in the animal, and sooner or later, it's going to kill me," but a mysterious "force field" the rabbit seemed to control had stopped him each time.

So maybe poor Alice Evans came to fear her Chihuahua in much the same way as that mentally tortured man feared his rabbit?  I dunno, but the two cases taken together do seem to explain a lot about the media's frightened animosity toward President Trump and why they frantically keep trying to kill him off.  Deep down, they're scared – really, really scared.  They've seen mysterious powers not of their world gather in him, and in handily defeating Hillary, withdrawing from the Paris Accord, restricting Muslim immigration, building the Wall, and rolling back Obama's legacy, he seems protected by an occult force field they cannot penetrate.

Hmmm?

I believe I'm more right than wrong.

PS: The rabbit turned out to be a great pet.  The kids loved him, and we had him for years.

Richard F. Miniter lives and writes in the colonial-era hamlet of Stone Ridge, New York and may be reached at miniterhome@gmail.com.  The acclaimed author of The Things I Want Most, his most recent book, What Sort of Parents Should We Be?: A Man's Guide to Raising Exceptional Children, is now available here.