Killing the bunny

I just killed my bunny. Well, he was no more my bunny than the robins, sparrows and house finches who flock around my back yard. But he was my bunny in that I became attached to him...or her...in the few brief weeks of his life.

When we first saw him he was so very small we thought he must be orphaned. Perhaps his mother had been killed by one of the neighborhood feral cats so the little guy was left to fend for himself. I don't know when baby bunnies are weened so perhaps momma kicked him and his brothers and sisters out to fend for themselves as momma bunnies have done for millions of years in the scheme that evolution has laid out for them.

But, today, I had to kill him.

I liked to watch bunny creep from out the great hosta leaves in my back yard. I watched as he munched grass and, once in awhile much to my chagrin, a few leaves of white Nancy. When he was out back I was careful to talk to him, letting him know I was around, and he didn't seem afraid.

But just about an hour ago, for whatever reason, I looked out my front door and saw bunny in the jaws of my cat. He was hurt I could tell, quite possibly dying. I was angry with the cat.

I made her drop it. Then when I saw bunny was yet alive, though life was ebbing away, I ordered her to finish him off. She could not. My temper got the better of me. I picked up the cat, took her in the house and yelled at her. I chased her up stairs into the bedroom, were she is at this moment, hiding from her daddy's rage underneath the bed.

My neighbors hear the commotion. They wanted to help. They wanted to take bunny to an emergency pet hospital but it was already too late.

I tried picking up bunny with my Gopher grabber, a reach extension tool hawked by the late Billy May. Bunny was too big and limp however so I put on a pair of suede winter gloves, picked bunny up in my two hands and took him back to the hosta garden where he lived. Then I gently as I could smothered his nose until he stopped breathing and buried him a a shallow grave.

Or so I thought.

I just now looked out my back window and, were I a superstitious man, I would think I am seeing ghosts. But no, it's bunny. My bunny. I know it's my bunny because he didn't run when I went outside and talked to him.

The cat is also forgiven. She is back on her place on the front porch.

Funny. When I thought the bunny I had to euthanize was my resident back yard bunny I was filled with rage, regret and a touch of sadness. Now that I know, however, that I was just another in a long line of bunnies the old cat has instinctually killed over the years all that has lifted.