The Thanksgiving Bunny
Last week there was a front-page newspaper article describing what Humane Society Officials are calling the worst case of animal cruelty they’ve ever encountered here. A man and his wife lived in a mobile home in the country, and when down-wind neighbors complained of the smell, investigators discovered 29 dead and decaying animals inside their trailer and 19 more in the yard. They also found an equal number of animals in the process of dying of starvation and dehydration. There were all kinds of animals - lizards, birds, gerbils, guinea pigs, iguanas, – and rabbits. Of the 40 rabbits on the premises, 19 were dead in their hutches when Animal Control showed up.
The newspaper article didn’t offer any motive or excuse or reason why people would do this to animals. I have a hard time imagining what torturous twisting two human souls must go through before they feel OK about sharing their property with dead and dying animals. One clue was that the man is on the state’s violent offender list for a previous rape conviction, and the woman shot her boyfriend to death five years ago and got off on a self-defense plea. The Humane Society confiscated the animals; the police arrested the couple; and Family Services has custody of their 4-year-old daughter.
Among the animals were 10 snakes, including a 10-foot boa constrictor. I imagine that the rabbits were there to serve as snake food, and if some of them died, well, as long as they were breeding faster than they were dying, that was OK. And if they sat in their own excrement up to their haunches, the snakes didn’t care, so why should the people?
Prompted by the newspaper article, Jerry and I decided we had room in our lives for another rabbit so I picked out a year-old cottontail who’s impossibly thin, like a concentration camp survivor. She has bald spots on her little bunny butt where she either chewed herself or was chewed upon by her hutch-mate, a common reaction in animals suffering the stress of starvation. In spite of her trauma, she’s confident and curious and cuddly. The first time she hopped about exploring the bedroom, she moved with such an odd hop that I sat there wondering, scurvy? rickets? starvation-induced osteoporosis? But an hour later she had a normal rabbit-hop and that’s when it occurred to me that this was a rabbit who probably never in her life had an opportunity to hop, and it took her a little while to learn how.
She’s a domesticated field rabbit, the dun color of dormant fields in autumn. She has huge ears and big brown eyes and humongous rear feet. You can feel every rib, every vertebrae, every feature of her pelvic structure. But she has a good appetite and is always in a good mood. She has her own private 3-story hutch complete with a box to sleep in and a stool to hide under or sit on top of; she gets vitamins in her drinking water and two kinds of fresh hay every morning; she gets to experience one new food every evening- kale, apple, carrot, broccoli; she has her own little rabbit tunnel set up between the bed and the wall; and she gets a half an hour of cuddle-therapy every morning and evening. She’s made fast friends with the dog who nurtures her and licks her wounds, she’s come to terms with the cat who mostly just observes her, but she fights with our other rabbit through the mesh of the baby gate that separates their territories. I hope that will wear off eventually. Her name is Angel. She’s soft as a cloud.
I remember every day that a new animal came to join my family. I remember every day that an animal left. How is it that these people were never able to connect with the joy of an animal’s arrival, or feel the despair of their departure?
I think it says a lot about rabbits that this one is able to forgive, forget, and go happily on with her life. She has a lot to be thankful for, and she knows it. And I’m thankful she’s here.