verging_on_random

If bunnies ruled the world

November 17, 2006 on 8:21 am | In Uncategorized |

Apparently we have a plague of bunnies on the Tweed Coast. I can’t say I’ve noticed, but they are being blamed for an associated plague of brown snakes. According to local wildlife experts like Bill Brown (retired driveway attendant, has personally killed more than 30 spiders in his career) the snakes eat the baby rabbits and cos there’s more and more baby rabbits around the snakes breed like …. well, like rabbits . Hmmmm … must run that theory past David Attenborough or someone.

Anyway I don’t care, I like bunnies. I had a pet bunny for nine years, he died last year. He was what they call a house rabbit, he lived inside like a cat. Which was kind of necessary, pets being verboten where I lived. Maybe they thought the bunny would bark and keep the neighbours awake or something, I don’t know. At first I tried to keep my bunny in a cage but he didn’t seem to like the idea much so eventually I gave him the run of the house. After he tried chewing through a few things like my mouse cable and an extension cord he decided plastic didn’t taste too good and he was no trouble at all. And no he didn’t make a mess, rabbits are just as house-trained as dogs. The only difference is that they tell you where to put the toilet not the other way round, but once they’ve picked the spot they use it all the time.

Bunnies have the most wonderful personalities, or at least mine did. They give lie to the idea that when animals are presented with a threat their response is either ‘fight or flight’. Bunnies only have one response: run away . Very sensible too. But they’re inquisitive and playful and occasionally they jump in the air out of pure happiness.

For a few years Thumper (yeah I know, very original) had a guinea pig for a friend. I was constantly amazed at the way the bunny was prepared to share his things, not like the guinea pig whose life’s ambition seemed to be to corner the world food market. And efficient! Thumper would finish every scrap of a leaf before he’d start on the next one. None of that wasteful ‘just eat the best bits’ stuff.

Bunnies are affectionate and love company. Thumper would be waiting for me when I came home, bright eyed and ready for some petting. He’d sit next to me while I was working at the computer and headbutt my leg occasionally when he wanted some attention. And he was a good listener. He’d sit up and pay close attention when I talked to him, even if it was about a particularly knotty problem in my thesis that he might not have completely understood.

He was a good watch-rabbit too. A few times he woke me up by stamping in the early hours of the morning and I found out later that there’d been thieves or vandals around. Of course he woke me up stamping sometimes when there was a bandicoot in the yard, or he thought he saw an evil dragon flying across the sky, but I’m sure he meant well.

He had a long and happy life, well as much as I could tell. I often felt guilty that he had such an artificial life but I drew comfort from the horrible fate that comes to most of the wild ones in Australia. Have you ever heard a rabbit’s death scream? It’s blood curdling. I knew when he was going to die because he just stopped eating, but he wasn’t in any pain so I saw no reason to have him put down. Dying in a strange place amongst a lot of cats and dogs would certainly have been a sad way for him to go. He was stretched out peacefully on the floor one morning when I got up and I shed a few tears for him, because he’d been such a faithful friend .

I think it would be nice if bunnies ruled the world. They share their things and they don’t have a mean bone in their bodies. The only reservation is that they’re not the smartest kids on the block but then neither is George W Bush and I’d take a bunny over him any day.

Have a good weekend all