My life in six rabbits

Recovering at last from measles, aged 7, I went out into our back yard to see my rabbit. It had gone. The hutch was preternaturally clean and there was no sign of recent habitation. What could have happened ?

Mugshot of the deceased

My rabbit had fallen victim to my mum's drive for order and tidiness, and I had not been assiduous enough in cleaning the thing out to meet her exacting standards. Always a ruthless disposer of the unwanted (furniture moved down to the cellar kitchen for 'storage' but was never seen again), it was true. She had offed my rabbit. Or at least taken it for a ride.

Nobody had mentioned this, and it was a surprising setback to recuperation.

As was the tactless rabbit pie a few days later. It was a first foray into vegetarianism.

Later, aged 30-something, I looked after a friend's rabbit when she was away. He came to stay at our place. He was a rabbit to be reckoned with and came with a chain attached to his own breeze block. 

Visual aid - breeze block without rabbit

He dragged the breeze block round the garden after the fashion of nutters training for Arctic adventures by dragging tractor tyres to Sainsbury's and back. This rabbit was huge, and had a malevolent glare. He could see off visiting dogs and the children were terrified of him. So was I. Try and pick him up and you were in for a fight. The best you could do was grab his breeze block and see who could pull hardest.

Then there was Milky. Milky was my school rabbit, and not at all butch. The clue is in the name. During holidays he went home by rota. When there were no volunteers, I took him home. Milky was a large and much cuddled white rabbit. The kind of rabbit which is dragged with a look of startled surmise from magicians' hats. Milky was rather portly, and not given to breeze blocks. 

Milky look-alike - re-enactment

He was a bit conspicuous in our garden, being easily spotted from down the road. 

Especially by Dobie.

Dobie ("He wouldn't hurt a fly") did not have a surname, but "Thug" would have worked a treat. He was the Doberman from the local pub, and he wandered freely. Dobie took a liking to Milky, and when we came down to find Milky gone and his hutch upside down in a flowerbed, it was wasn't a huge leap to think of Dobie. Later it turned out that Dobie had been spotted exiting at speed with something in his jaws.

Dobie lookalike practises smiling. Could try harder.

For the kids at school this was not too great an end for Milky, so they only knew that he, sadly, had died.

And then, only last year, we thought we had a mouse. This was not the mouse I caught 17 times in the same humane trap, releasing it in the next field each morning before twigging that it was merely sauntering back each afternoon from where I let it go. No, this was the creature from hell. Traps were overturned, the bait taken. Humane traps were licked across the kitchen on several nights. 

Maybe a rat ? In the kitchen ? 

One evening I heard a rustle, closed the kitchen door to stop any escape (even mine) and peered behind the dresser. I came face to face with large eyes staring out at me. A rabbit. It took one look at me, headed for the washing machine and was gone. After dismantling the kitchen piece by piece, it turned out that the rabbit was camped under the fridge, as my patient wife had suggested all along. On seeing me, it dodged into a pipe duct and much more dismantling was required before the renegade rabbit was released from the tame back into the wild.

Captured kitchen rabbit

And then there are my bloganonymous neighbours' Lion's Mane Rabbits. Thoroughbreds. Kings of the rabbit realm. Fudge and Chocolate by name. And it is my job to look after them when said neighbours go away. They try to burrow out, and to prevent this, I move the run each half day. This trims the lawn as well as ensuring that holes do not get right under the wire. I have talked to BN about the possibility of the rabbits dying on my watch, and the difficulty the children might experience. Inexplicable memories of measles swirl in my head.

One morning, the hutch door was open. Inside Chocolate was looking, er, sheepish. But Fudge was gone. He had clearly busted the door down and gone on the lam.

I gave chase, riding a bike and armed with binoculars. We are surrounded by fields. Another neighbour told me he had seen the rabbit the evening before. It had headed down the road, and the trail was now 14 hours cold. He could have hopped to Rotherham in half the time. The neighbour, being a dope, had not thought to shut the hutch, or to mention the missing rabbit.

Hmm.

That afternoon, after combing the area, much to the astonishment of local cows, I returned, dejected. There, right before my eyes, were two rabbits. Two rabbits, and the hutch was shut. What hallucination was this ? Was there a secret tunnel in and out that I had not spotted ? Fudge was looking fly. Lion's mane neat, he was as cool as frozen yogurt. He was an insouciant rabbit. He was an UNBELIEVABLE rabbit.

I screwed new locks on the doors. The hutch is now like Fort Knox with attitude. No rabbit will bust out again on my watch. It is the rabbit Alcatraz of The Peak District.

Neighbour 3 had found Fudge heading along the main road in the village, and recognising him as a fugitive, had scooped him up and brought him back, without thinking that I might like to know. Of course, thinking that she was doing me a favour, and that I would not even know that he had gone.

Rabbits.

Grrr.