Once Upon a Bun

In November 2012, I wrote about bunny love. At the time, Bunbun, aka Slippers Houdini, aka The Probe, had just been diagnosed with head tilt disease. I felt moved by what we were certain would be her imminent demise to write about bunnies in general, and about the sweetness of Bun’s bond with Bubsie. (There are many “b” words, in the rabbit world.) Two months later, Bubsie, a two-year-old, energetic, amorous, sleek little creature, died in his sleep. I’d never seen such a thing: a rabbit in an attitude of complete relaxation (lounged on his side, paws out in front and out behind, white belly showing, eyes half-open), completely stiff with rigor mortis.

And Bun, who could barely keep herself upright, whose head was wrenched at a permanent 90° angle, her “lower” eye closed and blind forever and her upper eye constantly infected—Bun abided. She abided for a year and three months. She died yesterday afternoon, one year almost to the day after Bubsie.

Back in June of 2007, the last thing our family needed was a rabbit. Frankie Bun had died at the ripe old age of 10ish many months before, and my then-husband and I agreed: no more pets. The girls were young. The marriage was foundering. Yup: a rabbit was definitely the last thing we needed.

So anyway.

That first weekend in June, as my father was preparing to drive the girls and me home from my parents’ place, someone (maybe him, maybe my mother) said, “Look! Is that a rabbit…?” It sure was. It was a rabbit with an impertinent butt and saucy, flicky back feet: Look at me! I’m under a car; now I’m bounding onto someone’s lawn; now I’m under the same car; now I’m under a different car!

“Oh yes,” said the neighbour who owned one of those cars. “The rabbit. It’s been around for three days; I have to check every time I want to back out of the driveway. I’m calling Animal Services tomorrow.”

I felt a tug on my skirt. Elder daughter (ED), seven years old, looking up at me with big eyes. “If we catch it, can we keep it?”

“No,” I said. “Probably not.”

Pursuing rabbits who are hopping full-tilt away from you is difficult, even in the confines of a single room. Outside? Well, let’s just say that there was no dignity, in this particular chase. Not for me, anyway. The rabbit ran, binkied (twisted in midair so that, when her paws touched ground again, she was going in a completely new direction), ran some more. My sister and I tried to corral her; no luck. People were gathering behind us on the sidewalk. Both daughters were shrieking, “Over there! Over there! Catch it catch it!”

In the end, she simply got tired. She flumped down on her belly behind the front wheel of a car that was parked on the street. Her furry sides were heaving; her nose was twitching double-time. My sister got down on her stomach on the other side of the car and slowly, slowly extended a crutch my mother had dug up in their basement. Crutch prodded rabbit, very gently, in the side. Rabbit twitched. Crutch prodded. Rabbit sat up and hopped two inches closer to me. I lunged.

The softest place in the universe is the hollow right behind a bunny’s ears. As I held this one by the scruff, I remembered this.

The observers applauded. We put the rabbit in an ancient metal cat cage my parents also had, in that treasure trove of a basement of theirs.

ED leaned against my legs. “Now we keep it, right?”

“I don’t know,” I said, trying not to look into the rabbit’s big brown eyes.

“I’ll call Animal Services right now,” that neighbour said.

“No,” ED said, her voice wobbling. “You caught it, so we get to keep it!”

“Agh,” I said.

The rabbit came home with us, in the ancient cat carrier. We’d tossed Frank’s old cage and had to improvise an enclosure with Rubbermaid bins and furniture. The rabbit (a she, we’d determined) escaped. Again and again, she shimmied out somehow, and ended up behind the TV, nestled amongst delectable electrical cables. Hence the “Houdini”—but we didn’t actually call her that. She was always Bunbun—that is, until Peter dubbed her “The Probe.”

She came with me when I moved out of my first-marriage bungalow and into an apartment, two months later. She lived in the girls’ room.

“Mommy!” ED called one day. “We just found a tattoo in Bunbun’s ear!” Faded blue ink; letters and numbers: a breeder’s mark. “So,” she said, musingly, “Bun has a mysterious past.” A purebred rabbit who’d been dumped from a car onto a sidewalk at 6 a.m., one day in June 2007, with two other rabbits. Those two disappeared. But Bun abided.

Two nights ago, we wrapped her in a towel and brought her to bed with us. We didn’t think she’d make it until morning, but she did. She wheezed, seeping and stinking with an infection that had taken hold in what seemed like mere hours. She kicked a couple of times, and I had to rearrange her. When I did I felt the horrible, stark ridge of her spine and her twisted, jutting shoulder; I saw her face, whose features (eyes, nose, lips, jaw) had all warped to such an extent that they seemed to have migrated. But the place behind her ears was unchanged. So were her big back feet.

We made an appointment with the vet for 6 p.m. She died around 3.

“I’m getting used to death,” younger daughter said yesterday. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not sad.”

Oh, Bun. The universe was a little bit softer, with you in it.