The Death of Fluffy Bunny (2008)

Fluffy Bunny died today

In a way I feel guilty about not giving him any other name but Fluffy Bunny, but that is exactly what he was – a fluffy bunny.

About two years ago we bought a white rabbit and then shortly after that we bought this small bundle of black and white fur, so hairy that you could barely discern the rabbit within except for the dark frightened eyes.

He was nicknamed Fluffy Bunny in want of a proper name and while the white rabbit instantly became peter, for literary reasons, Fluffy Bunny never really got another name because he so lived up to that nickname.

Initially we thought both rabbits were males – hence the name Peter for the white one, but after ‘playing together’ for a while Peter began to grow quite large, good eating and well taken care of we thought, but then one day there were small naked things eerily inching their way around Peter’s hutch and then we knew that Peter, our male white rabbit, had just given birth.

For me Peter never lost her name, but my wife and the children insisted that she become Missapee, a sort of Miss P - an adaption of his initial name. And as her rabbit kittens grew Missapee became a proud mother of her first litter of black and white fur balls about seven in all. Months later the same thing happened again, but this time it was controlled and we were ready and were delivered of another five naked rabbit babies (kittens).

After the second batch we decided to separate the two adult rabbits, especially so as Missapee (Peter) developed a very nasty side to her nature during pregnancy and would take to attacking us when we gave her food, not to mention the ferocious digging she undertook in her pen. So Missapee and Fluffy Bunny lived side by side in adjoining wooden huts sharing a mutual pen, but were only let out one at a time as a contraceptive measure.

And that is how they lived out the next two years, one day Missapee was let out the next day it was Fluffy Bunny’s turn. They would ‘talk’ through the wire netting on the front of their hutch, sniffing each other and communicating in the way that rabbits seem to do and the days just rolled by until the last couple of days.

Yesterday Fluffy Bunny was off his food and his fur was looking pale, he sat at the far end of the pen and refused to move for a long while, but eventually went into his hutch. Today Fluffy Bunny seemed to have little energy and refused to take food. My wife prepared some carrots and a drink for him but when she took it to him he had gone.

We looked at his rabbit body which somehow seemed smaller in death and saw that his eyes saw nothing of this world and his breathing had ceased. His warm body told the lie of life and we knew that he had passed over to that grand rabbit pasture in the sky. We blessed him and gave him burial in the way that animal lovers tend to do and I began to write this.