Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit

Someone once told me about a little ritual he has...and I don't know where he ever heard it from, but it's one of those superstitious things that you do like when you go through a red light and then have to kiss roof of your car so you don't get caught. On the first of the month, before you get out of bed, you are supposed to say "Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit." That's all. I don't know why.

Now this was probably almost 4 years ago and I have never once been able to remember to do it. But I think about it all the time. I should be able to remember because we have 3 rabbits. We used to have 4. We brought them into our home one by one and after each addition to the family we told ourselves it was the last one. This was all before Jacob, all except the last, Sage. So you can imagine that these first 3, Valentine, Nutmeg and Bart, were our babies. And when Jacob came, the bunnies started to get the shit end of the stick.

Bart was from the shelter in Keene that I volunteered at. He was there when I started volunteering and he just kept on being there day after day. He was so sweet and you could tell that he was just starved for attention. So when it was approaching graduation time, I was determined to take him home. I did, without any permission from the people who would be housing him, and me, after school was over, and without any agreement from Zach, who I assumed would be co-parenting. We already had Valentine and Nutmeg, our bonded pair (read: so much easier to take care of because they have each other), so Zach wasn't really happy that Bart was a part of our family, at least at first. But had him we did, and the bond that I formed with Bartie was like no other. I think it's just different with a rescue.

So less than a year later Jacob came along. That's when things started to go downhill. Jacob has always loved the bunnies, it's just harder to give them as much attention now that he requires most of the energy I have.

Then in January when Jacob was just over a year old we got a call from a friend who knew of a rabbit in desperate need of a home, and afterall, we are the bunny people. The rabbit was living in a basement, under one of those square, plastic milk crates, eating potato peels and she didn't have a name.

She was then known as 'Sage' and we had high hopes that she would soon become a friend to our poor third wheel, Bart (now Bartie, as Jacob had taken to calling him). We tried for months to get them 'bonded', but rabbits are extremely territorial and it just never took.

It's ironic that we brought her into the house to be a mate for Bart, because after one particularly bad fight between the two of them, in which Sage came away the winner, Bart developed an infection. This most likely stemmed from the bite from Sage. For months we went back and forth to the vet's treating Bartie for the infection, but after several hundreds of dollars and what appeared to be resignation on Bart's end, we decided it was time to make the difficult decision.

I've had rabbits all my life, as well as a great variety of other animals, so pet loss was nothing new to me. But this...this was different because I was experiencing it all through my small child. It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. And I had to try to explain to Jacob that we were never going to see Bart again. I brought them both into the backyard that day and let Bart run around and Jacob play with him. They snuggled and said goodbye...I still can't write about it without tearing up.

For at least 6 months after, we talked about Bart on an almost-daily basis. Then I think Bartie's memory started to make the shift into the category where you remember the talking about the memory and not so much the first-hand memory. Jacob only brought it up every couple weeks at random times. He'd be in the middle of something else and then stop to announce contemplatively, "I miss Bartie." Simple as that. And so we'd go over it once again...Bartie died, his body stopped working. He can't move, or eat or breath or any of the things that make a body live. He's not sleeping. And he's not coming back.

I think it must have been after we got the dogs that Jacob stopped asking when we were going to bring Bart home from the vet's. Because then we were back at the vet's all the time and he could see for himself that Bart wasn't there. More recently I've explained the actual physical location of where Bart is today, but I haven't shown him yet. I don't want to give him too much information too early and have him end up terrified of death like I am.

One day I found a rubber-like rabbit figurine that looks just like Bart. Jacob carried it around with him everywhere for quite a while. And as hard as it is to have those conversations about Bart with Jacob, I remain open to it because I know it's keeping the memory alive, for all of us. 'Little Bartie' is still in our daily lives, but more of in a 'watching over you' sort of way. I think that is kind of nice.