A football maven turns Good Samaritan animal rescuer

Malden High coach Exilhomme is all heart in saving the life of a baby bunny

By Steve Freker

It was the end of another long day at Macdonald Stadium and the coach was the last one to leave, as usual, one night last week. He was locking up the gate and getting ready to take off when something caught his eye. A large cat – all white – had stopped right in its tracks, about 15 feet away, just inside the stadium.

“I could see it clearly, mostly because it was all white and standing out in the darkness,” the coach recalled.

“Wait a minute,” the coach thought aloud, “what is that in the cat’s mouth?”

“It was holding something right in its teeth,” he said. “It was too big to be a mouse, but maybe it was a rat. I was just not sure, so I walked back into the stadium to check it out.”

The mysterious white cat got skittish as the coach approached, dropped its cargo and skedaddled away, as quickly as it had arrived. Walking up to take a closer look, the coach finally had his answer. Not a mouse, not a rat, but lo and behold, not a rodent at all. It was a baby rabbit, which somehow got separated from its family and was snatched up and most likely destined to be the next meal of that Macdonald Stadium cat.

Ask anyone who knows Malden High football Head Coach Witche Exilhomme, a 2012 MHS graduate who has lived most of his life in this community, and they would be able to list his most noticeable traits easily, though not necessarily in this order: tough, compassionate and with a heart as big as Malden Square.

Take away his job description, and if you ask anyone about Coach Exilhomme’s personal mission, the answer is this: He helps people. So it is no surprise what Witche Exilhomme did next. You see, he is also an animal lover. The big man scooped up the tiny bunny, wrapped it up in a towel in his car and brought it home.

It was a warm night so the coach made sure the baby rabbit was comfortable inside his car and fed it some carrots because he could not take it inside. Why not? Well, it seems that Coach Exilhomme is also a cat person. Who knew?

“I did not trust my own two cats, Zeus and Athena, if I brought the little one inside,” Coach Exilhomme recalled. “Too much temptation,” he added with a smile.

The coach brought the baby bunny to work the next morning, at Malden High School, where he is the newly appointed Dean of Students, and made arrangements to have a friend come by the school and take the baby rabbit to a safe place. “She is a very generous woman and that’s what she does. She takes in injured or lost animals and makes sure they get back to health. If they are wild, they get released back in a safe place,” Coach Exilhomme said, noting that the bunny did have a good-sized cut on its back that had to be attended to by the animal caretaker as well.

The little rabbit is now in good hands, thanks to the kind deed of the guy whose main job is taking care of his flock of football players and now the students of Malden High. Oh, and don’t forget Zeus and Athena!