Night of the Lepus

by Stephanie Black

Last weekend, we had the opportunity to host my ten-year-old son’s classroom rabbit. I wasn’t particularly ecstatic about this, since I am not what one would call an enthusiastic pet parent (I believe “pet parent” is the correct terminology, at least according to PetSmart. I think pets are wonderful things, as long as they are someone else’s. This may be due to the fact that I didn’t have pets when I was a kid, unless you count my younger siblings. It may also be due to some Monkish tendencies on my part (“No you cannot have a lizard! Don’t you know they carry salmonella?”) Or perhaps it’s because my Grinch-like heart is three sizes too small. But whatever the reason, the only animals I’ve allowed to take up permanent residence in the house so far are hermit crabs and teenagers.

I’m kidding about animalistic teenagers, by the way. My teenager and almost-teenager are a lot of fun to have around, though my oldest daughter’s tendency to take regular trips to the police station cost me a huge wad of cash yesterday. No, not for bail. She’s joining a police Explorer post and oh . . . my . . . heck, but police uniforms are expensive. I hope those boots last until the Millennium.

But back to the bunny saga. It was our turn for Mr. Snuggles, and even I wasn’t Grinch enough to say no, we can’t take the bunny. It was only for a weekend, after all.

Mr. Snuggles is a large, gray, fluffy Angora rabbit with fur on his face that looks like mutton chop whiskers. He's a good-natured rabbit—he’d have to be, with all the poking and prodding he gets—and we carted him home in his bunny bin along with his outdoor pen if he wanted to catch some rays. He was litter-box trained, more or less, so we let him wander around the family room. It was actually very cute to have this rabbit relaxing in front of the sliding door—I guess he liked the coolness there next to the glass. Sometimes he’d tuck his limbs under him and sit like a giant ball of fluff. Awwww. So cute. He grew on us—even on me, believe it or not, and even though his bedding got everywhere, we enjoyed having him around. The kids loved him. Even my toddler liked him as long as he was contained. If he was free, she was edgy. Once he hopped toward her (he usually just minded his own business) and she screamed like an extra in Jurassic Park.

We should have trusted her childlike intuition that this bunny was trouble, but in our naivete, we didn’t realize that behind that fluffy exterior lurked Teeth of Doom. Mr. Snuggles destroyed a Palm Pilot docking cord, which fortunately my husband could live without. But he also sank his bunny teeth into my laptop cord. A trip to the Mac store and eighty-five bucks later, I am wiser in the ways of bunnies. I’ll never look at a Cadbury commercial the same way.