My eight year old daughter wants a bunny. Not a stuffed bunny or a chocolate bunny or a little plastic hopping bunny. She already has all of those. She wants a real, live bunny. Very, very badly does Ryann want this bunny. I hate to sound so skeptical about my daughter and her baby Peter Cottontail. I have just come to understand that with children much like with their taller, grown-up counterparts, life is sometimes more about the getting than the actual having.
Here is the thing about little girls, they may be made of sugar and spice and everything nice, and perhaps this next part was omitted from the poem because it is difficult to find words that rhyme with “relentless without mercy,” but it doesn’t make it any less true. My daughter wants, even needs, a bunny.
Ryann tells everyone that we encounter that she wants a bunny. People tell her back how they know of a cousin or a friend or a cousin’s friend who has a bunny. They go on to say that these friends and cousins have been able to COMPLETELY HOUSEBREAK the bunnies and these delightful little creatures hop around and use a litter box or hop up onto the toilet seat, flushing and washing their feet afterwards. I suppose they also dial 911 in an emergency. Just when you think that you have heard all the urban legends that circulate the earth, you have to add to the list of ghost girls in prom dresses under bridges on rainy nights and old ladies with axes in the backseats of cars the one about the amazing, well trained bunnies of phantom friends and cousins.
I am not sure I would describe either of my daughters and CERTAINLY NOT either of my dogs as COMPLETELY HOUSEBROKEN. The only creature in our house that is not at times out of control is Myrtle, our fish, and sometimes even she swims around in her bowl until she makes herself dizzy.
Only my real friends, Diane and Heidi, tell Ryann that bunnies can sometimes be mean. They tell her that bunnies can scratch and bite if they don’t like you. Ryann is convinced that I put them up to saying this.
So we go to the pet store. See above reference to little girls, “relentless without mercy.” The pet dude brings us a bunny which I end up holding so that it doesn’t scratch Ryann. She pets him and talks to him, promising to hug him and squeeze him and call him George. She even picks out his perfect habitat cage. It is then that the pet dude tells us about the socialization of bunnies and how if they don’t “take” to their environment and you don’t “interact” with them enough, they can become feral. Yes, feral. I used my Thesaurus, feral, as in, wild, untamed, angry, will take hostages, feral. In other words, belligerent bunny will hop about your home pooping as he pleases, scratching and biting until you are holed up in your bathroom with your cell phone, frantically searching for the numbers for After Disaster and Feral Critter Control.
No bunny for us. Ryann is not happy. As my mom used to say, “I’ve had young’uns mad at me before,” which translated to: you will eventually get over this. Perhaps our bunny would have been a wondrous joy of a pet, but I have my doubts. Ryann will move on to something else. I just hope the next thing lacks the potential of becoming feral or maybe she could just go excavating in her room and reclaim some of the things she has forgotten she even owns. Actually, that exercise is good for all of us. Just like Sheryl Crow sings in “Soak Up the Sun,” “It’s not getting what you want; it’s wanting what you got.”