In Praise of the Plain

Some time ago I read an article in House Rabbit Journal that stayed with me.  It was about bunnies looking for their forever home, and the plain ones talking to each other about the new-fangled and fancy ones that got adopted out first. Right away I rooted for the underdog. The whole unfairness of the way the world works was right there in those words. In 2006, I talked Rick, my husband, into getting a bunny. We went to HRS and I let him choose. He picked Westopher because Westopher was small, a dwarf. But Westopher was plain brown. I agreed reluctantly. In my mind, I had wanted a spotted bunny like I had seen on Shattuck Avenue in 1982. That bunny was very big, black and white spotted, and wearing a turquoise harness on a turquoise leash. The owner put up with my slack-jawed amazement. I didn’t know bunnies could look like that. I was brought up being told that animals in nature don’t have emotions. They are just animals. So it’s okay to shoot them. I never believed that. Having a pet bunny that looked like a field bunny taught me for sure, animals in the wild are living beings with the ability to love and bond and care about each other. Maybe people think that if a bunny looks more domesticated, it has more developed feelings. If it has been bred to be exotic or attractive, it must be more sensitive.

Keeping a bunny in the house instead of outside in a hutch is a creative new idea, a foray into the wild side.  A bunny is not a dog or a cat.  Until recently it wasn’t considered a house pet.  Maybe this is a step in more animals being given affection.  If a common field bunny has feelings, why not a skunk?  Or a possum?  With patience, they too could become a family member, a couch cuddler.  The bigger implication is that all these field critters have a soul as sure as the bunny does, and should not be seen only as garden pests to be poisoned or shot for sport.

At first, I knew nothing about relating to bunnies.  The advice I had was to get on the floor with them, so I did.  Westopher curled into a neutral, nondescript lump and I petted him and talked to him.  I tried speaking French to him.  I tried speaking some gibberish.  He just stared at me. I gave him an empty gallon water bottle to play with and his small feet pedaled it.  We put up a pet gate to keep his world small and safe.  In a few weeks, we started letting him in the living room. I still can’t get over the strange delight of watching a bunny hop around my living room, an opening into a world that wasn’t accessible before.

Within a few months, Westopher was letting me hold him on my stomach for hours. It was just what I needed.  Then somehow I managed to talk Rick into a friend for Westopher.  So we returned to the House Rabbit Society and got Picasso, a beautiful English spot.  Like the fancy one I originally had in mind.

Picasso didn’t like to be on the couch and would squirm away, and end up spending lonely hours in their cage at night while I held Westopher.  I knew he was shy, so I loved him for his soft beauty.

When we lost Little Westopher in 2013 from complications from a tooth surgery, I wanted to find another friend for Picasso.  It was sad to see Picasso grooming the stuffed bear I put in his cage to keep him company.

I knew what I wanted in a new bunny.  Someone that liked to cuddle.  Someone that needed to interact with me. But of course, it mattered more who Picasso wanted.

When they brought Martha out, she was big and light brown like a common field bunny. She had very, very big ears and long eyelashes.  I looked at the expression in her eyes.  She seemed to be tolerating this game of being examined and judged with a grain of salt.  She was plain. When they carried her away, she sat upright obediently in the staff’s arms, her big ears disappearing into the distance around the corner. I knew she knew she had been passed by.  And it felt like she knew why.

We came back a second time to meet more bunnies. There were some unusual-looking ones that I wanted to like, but nothing clicked.  The way Martha’s ears had looked as they took her away had stuck in my mind, somehow touching me.  I told Rick I was considering Martha. Rick said, Oh, no.  No big ugly girls need apply.  But someone sitting in the room said that Martha followed the staff around like a dog.  This was what I had waited to hear.  And she and Picasso were okay together.  We took her home.

Martha was not afraid like Picasso.  Where Picasso hid behind the table, Martha went out into the middle of the living room and plopped down in front of the TV, her back legs spread behind her, a sign of comfort.  Soon I noticed Picasso out of his cage in front of the mirror instead of behind it, waiting for her.  He liked her chutzpah!  And he wasn’t hiding! It was so different from the way he had been second bunny with Westopher.

I put Martha up on the couch to see if she would cuddle.  She was too big and spindly to fit on my lap so she folded up next to me like a purse.  Every day now she gets up on the couch to wait for me, leaving enough room for me to sit down in the space between her and the arm. 

I realized Martha is a caretaker, sensing my need for contact, and also taking care of Picasso’s need for attention and connection.  She has figured out what is needed in our home, and in her aware and big-hearted way, gives it.

I was in my mid-40s when I finally learned to go for good, instead of good-looking in a partner.  Seems the better looking they were, the more smug they were, and the less they were willing to work with me.  Same goes for bunnies.  Go for good. Go for kind. Go for the one that comes up to you and wants to say hello.  Above all, be willing to meet them halfway in patience and plainness.

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