My Easter bunny story

Saturday night, I went to Mark’s.  He and Scottie B were working on putting new handlebars on Mark’s KTM, and after some begging on my part, we eventually headed to Scottie’s farm to see the new kittens.  The mama cat was hiding them, so I never actually got to see them.  Instead, I was introduced to the very tiny, very weak, very sick baby bunny that his dad had found in one of their fields.  It was the most adorable thing I have ever seen in my life – it fit in the palm of my hand and looked more like a tiny stuffed toy than an a real animal.  The pathetic state it was in also broke my heart – we fed it a tablespoon of milk from a tiny syringe and cozied it up to a heating pad and small blanket snugly arranged in a small cardboard box.  I jokingly asked if I could keep it in my dorm room and Scottie’s mom’s eyes lit up.  She asked if I could keep it overnight and through Sunday for them – they would be in Waukesha all day for church and Easter activties and it would be a logistical problem to take care of the baby bunny.  I knew I’d be at Mark’s all day Sunday, a very relaxed setting, so feeding it every hour and checking to see that it was alive and doing okay wouldn’t be a problem.  I agreed to bunny-sit, and after gathering up the box and its contents and the fragile, ill creature, Mark and I took it back to his house for a few hours.  His mother thought it was adorable and helped me feed it skim milk and sugar water.  She even took an old pair of socks and rolled it into a log so that the little bunny would have a surrogate mommy to snuggle with.  Eventually, Mark and I came back to my house to sleep, setting up our charge in the laundry room, the warmest room in the house that would also protect the bunny from the curious cats.  We stayed up with it until 1 AM, fretting and worrying, then finally dozed off, setting our cell phones to go off at certain alternating intervals.  I did my shifts of getting up and rearranging the rabbit’s weak limbs and trying to get it to drink the liquid from the dropper, and as 4 AM rolled around, I went back to bed, planning to sleep until 7.  Mark got up at 5 for his shift, but, to his horror, he found the little baby bunny had died.  He woke me up, and I went to look at the little creature.  I sobbed over its lifeless body until Mark finally coaxed me to come back to bed, where I zonked out immediately, exhausted.  We woke up to my cell phone at 8, as we’d planned the night before, originally intending for me to shower before we made the 20 minute trip back to his house.  But the time that had been allotted for bathing and getting ready was instead devoted to finding a tiny box, lining it with a old washcloth, and digging and burying our little bunny.  It broke my heart – I have never formed such an intense attachment to anything, living or material, in such a short period of time.  My mother took a picture of Mark and me holding the bunny, and I’m glad she did – it was so adorable and I’m so glad that I’ll have something to look at.

And then the irony of receiving a tiny stuffed rabbit in the Easter basket Mark’s mother made for me…aih…::sigh::