Rabbit For Dinner

Some people think you shouldn't rename your pet. Some people think it's a legitimate manifestation of self-expression to rename your pet. Some people think that on a scale of Zero to Ten of what's important in life - where a Ten would be, for example, the destruction of the planet by global consumerism and big business - whether or not it's right to rename your pet would be a Zero.

I, while being in this latter category, have renamed the pet for no particular reason, other than the fact that since it's now me who feeds it and cleans up after it - which are just about the only two things you can do with a rabbit - I might as well be the one to choose his name. The rabbit is now called Budgie. Gradually the other members of the family have started to switch.

Budgie, for his part, thinks that the importance rating of what he's called is a Zero. For that matter he also thinks the destruction of the planet by global consumerism and big business is a Zero. Whether he gets fresh lettuce every day is a Ten. As is getting to watch Life On Mars.

In my continuing capacity as Dad, I took the decision that Budgie should be allowed to run free in the garden. The fencing around the garden looks secure, the one area that was open I blocked off. On Sunday I let him out, without consulting the full Executive Board of the governing Autonomous Collective. Budgie bounced around the garden for three hours, if he tried to escape he made a very poor job of it, and at the end we managed to round him up and get the wee fella back into his cage without too much trouble.

One of Two was stressed and unhappy throughout, nervously watching, chain-chewing her way through a pack of forty sweetie Woodbine, waiting for some evil predator to leap over the fence into the garden and tear poor wee Budgie to bloody pieces. A leopard or tiger or some other indigenous Polish beast. Yet Budgie survived, and there was no ferocious mauling at the hands of one of the big cats.

At the end of it all One of Two made me promise not to let Budgie out of his cage in the garden ever again. I didn't make the promise.

The next day, which in an unsurprising turn of events, transpired to be Monday, I let Budgie out on the loose once more. Everything seemed to be going well. It was a warm, sunny afternoon, a few light clouds flitting slowly through the sky. The kids and I played football, Scotland won the World Cup (again), and even One of Two seemed to relax into Budgie's presence roaming free in the great wilderness of the back garden.

As the afternoon rolled on, evening approached and the day started to turn grim, it came time to bring the rabbit in from the cold. The rabbit, naturally, was not too happy about this turn of events and legged it for the back fence, which is shrouded in shrubbery and trees. One of Two and I approached the area in classic pincer movement formation, with TPCKAM and Two of Two deployed in a two-man containing midfield role.

Budgie was as good as in the cage.

Suddenly the somnambulant summer's evening exploded in a cacophonous riot of adrenaline-fuelled action and noise. Budgie had escaped, and unfortunately One of Two was there to see it.

'Budgie's through the fence!' she screamed, as Budgie flew like the wind along the other side of the fence. Thing was, Budgie wasn't flying like the wind in a dramatic break for freedom, Budgie was flying like the wind because he'd just made the acquaintance of next door's dog, Hannibal. A yappy little gobshite of a terrier, may be, but a yappy little gobshite of a terrier well-trained in the arts of ripping leporine flesh into tiny constituent parts.

In a flash Hannibal had Budgie pinned up against the fence, his jaws tearing at Budgie's fur. One of Two had a front row street for the kill. Now me, I was thinking, well Budgie, if it's your time, it's your time... I couldn't give a stuff about the rabbit, and was just wondering if there would be enough left over after Hannibal had finished with him for us to have a wee helping of pappardelle with rabbit, herbs and cream for tea. But One of Two wasn't so sanguine about the impending death of her beloved pet, which she'd mostly ignored for the previous six months.

And while rabbits are of no interest to me, I'm not so cold-hearted as to be unmoved by the screams of my traumatised wee girl. Employing moves not too dissimilar to Bruce Willis's stuntman, I leapt dramatically over the fence, whipping my Kalashnikov from my gun belt as I went, lobbing a couple of hand grenades into the bushes for good measure.

Budgie had managed to escape Hannibal's jaws, had legged it one way, met another fence, turned, managed to avoid the snapping jaws of oblivion and had raced towards the shrubbery at the other side of the garden. It all happened in a flashing stramash of black and white and brown, animals racing at breakneck speed, their very existence at stake. And then, from the shrubbery, came the sound of high-pitched squealing, and then two seconds later Hannibal, the yappy little gobshite of a terrier, emerged with a smile on his face. Some guard dog, he didn't even seem bothered that there was a total stranger in his back garden, and he just walked past me, flicked me the bird, said, 'Your rabbit is stew, Bud,' and casually wandered off to find some other innocent animal to maul.

The garden was littered with rabbit fur, where Hannibal's jaws had been wrapped around Budgie's waist, and from over the fence I could still hear One of Two's wailing lament for her dead rabbit. Things looked grim. I plunged into the undergrowth, searching for signs of a twitching near-dead beast, wondering how I was going to kill it off without having to present any of the evidence to One of Two. Slightly uncomfortable about wading through the shrubbery in someone else's garden, I nevertheless marauded around for a few minutes. Unable to find anything, and fearing being picked off by sniper fire from our neighbour's bedroom window, I legged it back over the fence and faced the tears and recriminations from my eldest spawn.

TPCKAM and I did our best, telling her that Budgie might still be alive, and that there was no body yet discovered to confirm the presumed execution. Two of Two wasn't helping matters by wandering around saying excitedly, "Is he dead? Is there blood? What does his body look like? Did you hear the squealing?" Our babysitter turned up, and he and I set off in a delegation to the neighbour to try and effect officially approved entry to their garden so that we might search for Budgie without fear of being taken out by a well-placed bullet in the napper. Unfortunately I'm not the friendliest looking bloke, while our babysitter was dressed in army combats and had just had his head shaved into a Mohawk. They weren't for letting us in, although they did go and search the area themselves, setting off with the ominous words, 'If Hannibal saw a rabbit he would have killed it.'

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, TPCKAM was fearing the worst, waiting for the two emissaries of the opposition to unearth the twitching and bloodied, near-dead bunny, and so she sent One of Two and Two of Two off to search our garden to give them something to do. I was just contemplating whether or not we should do a sweep of the general neighbourhood, knocking on countless doors and asking total strangers if we might trample all over their plantlife in the hope of unearthing a wounded bunny, when the cry went up from over the fence that Budgie had been found. He had fled back through the hole in the fence with such speed that no one had seen him, and was finally found quivering and very, very scared in the spider-laden area under the stairs.

Budgie was examined for wounding and rendering of flesh, but it appears that the only scars will be psychological. Otherwise, Hannibal the ineffective rabbit-killing muppet, managed to grab a lot of hair and little else. And, in the cold and calm light of day, it was obvious that the squealing sound was Hannibal biting his squeaky toy, in a pathetic, testosterone-laden attempt to have dominion over something, seeing as the rabbit had managed to leg it.

And now, while Budgie the Netherland Dwarf is firmly back in his cage, so am I.

Next week I give the rabbit a bath beneath a dodgy light fitting.