So Long Peter Cottontail

Ahhh, home sweet home--a place where you feel at ease, a place you build memories, and a place where you can let your dog run around in the back yard to chase her tail, butterflies, and fat little bunny rabbits that must have lost a step in the winter months!

Over the last weekend, Annie and I headed down to Peoria to show our house to a potential buyer for the second time. Just to ensure the yard was in shape, we arrived at the house a little early to do some late winter raking, fallen branch clean-up, and eventually entrails disposal. As I was working with one of my many power tools I no longer get to use now that I live in an apartment (boo-hoo, I know), I hear this noise that resembles a young man plugging his nose and in a falsetto voice constantly "Bwap! Bwap! Bwap-ing" Quickly looking up, I see Sadie (our killer 4 year old, 50 lbs, yellow lab) in the corner of the back yard with her back to me shaking her head like an 8 year old refusing to eat the last bite of rotten potato salad. As she continually thrashes her head back and forth, I see little bits of cotton flying through the air and the echo of the "bwaps" coming from the rabbit that was so desperately trying to get his chubby little bunny buns through the, I'm sure, smaller-than-he-can-remember chain link fence.

Seeing this, I quickly realize what is going on--my Sadie finally got what she has always wanted: a wascally wabbit all of her own! All those years of pulling on the leash, chasing them down in her partial-woofing doggy dreams, and sitting at the back door whining--practically begging--to be let out to run one down, had finally come true. A feeling of pride rushed over my body. My little four-legged, stinky-breath, hairy baby was all growed up doing what she was supposed to do! But, no--I can't let this happen, I can't let the blood of the innocent (I just assume that rabbits are innocent) be spilled 20 minutes before the house is to be shown! With that, I take off my plastic safety goggles and hurle them at Sadie to gain her attention. It was at this moment I realized that light weight plastic doesn't fly at near the velocity or distance you might think it would. Nonetheless, as I continued to move towards Sadie I was vehemently yelling her name, "Sadie Elaine! Sadie Elaine!" as if she 1) knows she has a middle name, B) knows what it means when I call her by her middle name, and 4) would give up her dream simply because she heard the sound of 2 oz of plastic hit 5 feet behind her and my voice quickly approaching. When I finally get to her, I grab her by the haunches and try to pull her away from the rabbit. From my perspective this would seem to pull the dog away from the rabbit, but from Mr. Cottontail's perspective this only aided Sadie in tearing the rest of his hide away to now make him just Mr. Cotton.

During the furry, Annie had also come to the rescue, but now as we both held our vicious little killer back, Mr. Cotton scurried halfway across the back lawn using only his front two feet try and avoid any further damage. Over the next few minutes we continued to clean and hold our little Ivan Drago back from her natural instinct to make Apollo Creed out of the rabbit. Sadie was then put into the back seat of the car to think about what she had done, but instead, quickly fell into a deep slumber where, I can only imagine, she chased and caught more rabbits. Mr. Cotton on the other hand, continued to scuttle around the back of the yard doing what he could with only the front half of his body remaining. Finally, we were able to convince him to calm down, crawl into a blanket, so we could smack him over the head with a shovel. Okay, so the shovel was made up, but seeing that he was on his final bunny breaths, we did wrap him in a towel, petted him for a couple minutes, and laid him to rest--far away from any other killer labs. After leaving him, I moved on to console my nearly-teary eyed wife about how Sadie was just doing what dogs do, and Mr. Cottontail was just doing what fat, slow, stuck-in-fences, bunny rabbits do. Eventually, about ten minutes after his last rites, I checked on our little friend to find that his time had come and that he finally drifted off to that big Easter basket in the sky...

I guess I'm not quite for sure why I chose to write this blog; maybe I feel guilty that a rabbit's life came to an end through the teeth of my dog, or maybe this is my own little version of how nature always finds a way to take its course. I suppose it could be either of those, but likely it's because as sad as it was, I still giggle every time I picture how stupid and happy Sadie looked as we pulled her off of that rabbit. I only hope that Mr. Cottontail can now rest in peas...and carrots...and other vegetation that stereotypical rabbits eat.