December 2
So, so cute...
There are some things a person should only experience once. A bunch of years ago, I got a rabbit to replace a rabbit I'd given to my grandparents (have I told that story? I had a rabbit, she was sort of unfriendly, but not mean. I traveled with her everywhere, and eventually wound up giving her to Angelo and Eleanor because it was clear that I wasn't exactly her cup of tea. She lived with them for a few years, and they DOTED on her. Gah, it was nauseating. She got sick and died really suddenly, and they were DISTRAUGHT. I decided the nice thing to do was to maybe try and get another rabbit for them. Eleanor wasn't having it, so I was stuck with her. The replacement rabbit.). She was a cute, gentle thing. Very, very mellow and happy and laid back until one night, when I walked into my bedroom and noticed that she'd given birth all over my floor. Not only had she given birth on the floor, but she was pretty much ignoring her new babies. By pretty much, by the way, I mean entirely. She was hopping back and forth over them as the living ones writhed around pitifully and the dead ones, well, stayed dead.
It's a great story because it's so revolting--the idea of BIRTH occuring on your bedroom floor! The very place you rest your tender head at night! Birth! Afterbirth! Death! Wild kingdom, right there in Brooklyn. Amazing. Like all stories, though, it's the kind of thing that gets trotted out when the situation arises (What, you don't have situations where it's appropriate to talk about a rabbit squirting out babies on your carpet? You must hang out with some boring people.) but I don't think about it all that often. Sophie (which is what I named the no mothering skills rabbit) died about two years later, which is when I got Celeste and Isabelle. You all know what happened to Celeste, so I'm not going to rehash it now, but if you remember that I bought two tiny, baby lop rabbits--one of which turned out to be a mean, growling, biting freak, you're up to date.
Last week, their constant fighting (they're still not named, by the way, because I'm giving one of them to the pound. It's no kill, so don't email me and tell me how shitty I am.) got to us, and Nick put up a lucite barrier between them, sort of like what Angelo and Eleanor need. They can see one another but can't fight! It's the perfect solution until this weekend, when the mean one gets hauled away FOREVER. They're much quieter, I feed them seperately, no problems.
Fast forward to Friday morning, the day after Thanksgiving. Nick and I are getting ready to leave the house. He's giving the dogs a snack. I walk into the kitchen and say "Huh, it smells weird in here! It smells, I don't know, kind of meaty!" I walk into the dining room to put on my coat, and notice, out of the corner of my eye, something really rather, well, wrong, going on in the cage. I take a closer look. In the Tupperware bowl I'm using as a makeshift foodbowl, there's something--several somethings--bright red. I look from the bright red contents of the bowl to the rabbit who is CHEWING and think "Wow, that's weird, who fed the rabbit meat--OH MY GOD!! SHE HAD BABIES!!! AND SHE'S EATING ONE!!! AAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" I shrieked and backed out of the room into the kitchen, sort of yelling "AAAHH!! BABIES!!! SHE HAD BABIES!!!!!!!!!!! SHE'S EATING ONE!!! AAHHH!!" We move in and take a closer look--it's like a scene out of a horror movie. One of the babies is still alive, but seems to be missing some limbs (and not from a birth defect, if you know what I'm getting at and I THINK YOU DO. Yum yum.), as do all of the babies that are in one piece. It's a massacre. There's blood and baby parts and placenta and afterbirth EVERYWHERE, and the entire time, she NEVER STOPS CHEWING. Fortunately, she HAD the babies IN the Tupperware dish and those are the ones that are only slightly gnawed
Nick is an old hand at cleaning up animal bloodbaths and moves right in for the removal. He puts on a leather glove and gets the dish out. Sadly, there was some suffocation to follow (heh, for the chewed babies, not for Nick...) and a whole bag of baby parts and blood for the garbagemen to take away.
You would think that after she had the babies she'd be friendlier, right? That this story would end with her being all not bite-y and not growl-y or grunty, right? That I'd be able to reach right in and pet her and she'd be calm and I'd get one of them fixed and everything would be happy and nice. Ha! She's just as horrible, and now she's gotten a taste for blood and I have witnessed the dramatic (and entirely nasty) moments after the miracle of birth.
the other day - home - email - tomorrow