Last summer, when One of Two started asking for a rabbit, we were advised by several people not to do it. Kids always get bored with rabbits, they said. Rabbits aren't particularly interactive. There's not a lot you can do with a rabbit other than stroke it, if it lets you, clean up its faeces, repair the wires that it chews and, if all else fails, eat it for your dinner. The kids will ignore the rabbit, and you'll be left looking after the furry wee creature the way you look after the kids. It'll be like having another, if very low-maintenance, child.
So, last summer we didn't so much talk One of Two out of getting a rabbit, we just ignored her. Seemed best. And then, as previously detailed on this page, I cracked just before Christmas, and Patches The Netherland Dwarf was brought into the family.
One of Two's relationship with Patches the Netherland Dwarf has gone through three distinct stages.
1. Regular wee girl with a pet stage. Interested, concerned, doing her duty, clearing up, feeding etc.
2. A reluctant keeper of the flame, usually indulging in three or four hour volcanic fights with her mother every time the subject of taking care of the rabbit came up.
3. Forgetting that the rabbit exists.
The sages were right. Of course. Didn't really think it would be any different, but I suppose I was sucked into trying the anthropological experiment just in case of some miracle. Hasn't happened. One of Two, while being in every other respect a marvellous and individual wee creature, has absolutely hit the nail on the head of cliche when it comes to leporine-caregiving. Couldn't give a stuff. And so, as the Parent Who Spends His Day In The House, rabbit duties have fallen to me.
It's fortunate - and I suppose there was some aforethought on my part here - that rabbits are low, low maintenance. You feed them lettuce and seeds and stuff. Rabbit food. You let them out to bounce around your living room. You clean their cage out every few days, and here is the big advantage of rabbits. Their excrement. That's why rabbits are ok pets. If they splurged out minor cow pats, if they deposited several hundred mini-splats of moist faeces every day, you'd have them in the stewing
pot before the end of the first week. But those hard pellets of crap - which could severely wound a man if fired from an airgun - present few problems in the stench and cleaning department.
And so, Patches the Netherland Dwarf and I have been thrown together, like survivors of a plane crash on a desert island.
Last week we were in the pet shop buying rabbit stuff. The kids came running up excitedly and said, 'Can we get a mouse?'
And at this point I quoted Samuel L Jackson's 'Tyrany of evil men' speech from Pulp Ficton, and chased them from the shop, pistol whipping them with pellets of rabbit shit fired from a ShinSung Career Dragon Slayer .50 Air Rifle.
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