I have a teenage rabbit. I’ve come to the opinion that health education should require young people to raise rabbits rather than wear bags of flour. I’m not sure how much personality flour babies present, but bunnies take all of the real-life parenting challenges and condense them into a lagomorphic-hyperspeed life cycle.
Just ten weeks ago I was concerned about whether or not my little bunny would make it through the night, and I would stay up late comforting the little thing (I mean, you would freak out too if a cat twenty times bigger than you was carrying you around the neighborhood in his mouth.) A week later, Ivy began testing me and the wife’s resolve. Can I poop here? What if I chew on this? Don’t pet me enough, I’ll crawl inside your pillow case and chew through it from the inside.
For a few short weeks, there was a blissful period during which Ivy sought to please us and simply enjoyed our company. Then, two weeks ago, the same cute, little bunny that had been time consuming and yet rewarding…began tearing up everything in site. Ivy went nuts. Up until that time, she had respected the boundaries of her cage and the bed she had been given open access to jump up onto whenever she wanted. Suddenly, those boundaries were suffocating. She refused to stay on the bed, and when we retuned her she chewed through everything like a short-legged, long-eared goat.
We tried everything to deter her. Carrots AND sticks (literally). She chewed through them all! We sat with her. We chastised her. We praised her. We cajoled her. She ate the curtains. She ate the rubber mats. She ate the window sills. We removed her freedoms, but cause and effect suddenly meant nothing to our previously very bright young girl bunny. There was simply nothing to be done. No amount of instruction or affection could overcome the dreaded…the terrible…the unavoidable…hormones.
In a matter of weeks, Ivy had grown up. Turn, turn, turn. Never to be a little bunny again:
And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man in the moon
“When you coming home, dad?” “I don’t know when”
But we’ll get together then
You know we’ll have a good time then
[wipes away a tear] Ehem, now where were we? Oh yeah, hormones. My little bunny wanted more than anything to break away from her chains and populate the neighborhood with dozens of her own bunnies. No amount of my explaining that a tidal wave of feral rabbits was not a good thing for society would unravel her inborn nature (and she knew our male bunny, Dynamite, was outside the guest room door. I suppose in real life, Dynamite would be a foreign exchange student from France, and his name would be Dominique…and he probably wouldn’t already be neutered.)
Ivy had become a full fledge teenager, no longer interested in the calm, gentle guidance of her adopted parents. We had to step aside and let her find herself, become her own person. Right?
Nope. We’re talking about a rabbit here people. Finally our scheduled date for spaying Ivy came this past week. After a short operation, we brought our calm, little Ivy home again. And like that we short-circuited her teenage years in order to fast-forward to responsible adulthood. [deep breath]
Just like real parenting. (Right? For the love of all things holy, please!) [deep sigh]
Well, more realistic than bags of flour to be sure.
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