Cottage - Issue 3

The Cottage Next Door - Issue 3

The Cottage Next Door                                   Issue 3

Lucky finds a new home                                            By Charles R. Ratliff

We were at the North Judson Mint Festival Father’s Day weekend, having a good time, as much as we could despite the weather. For the second year in a row, rain interrupted the festival, and all of us who attended had to duck under awnings and tents to attempt to stay dry.

Under one such tent was a common carnival game. A Carny was handing out little white balls and collecting dollar bills, bunny rabbits frolicking at his feet. As we watched people try to land Ping-Pong balls into glass cups floating in a kiddie pool, Becca tugged on the side of my shirt.

“Can I play?” she asked.

Quickly and deftly, Bizzy and I steered her out from under the tent as I shook my head, seeing the game as nothing more than one of chance where money is spent for no real reward.

“No, not today, Becca.” We then headed over to the library for the book sale.

“I really want to try and win a rabbit!” she continued, as I ducked from one awning to another, while Biz and Becca shared an umbrella.

Ignoring her protestations, which only lasted until the next cool thing – like books – came along; we made it to the book sale, and thought the rabbit game was all but forgotten.

Little did we know that a thunderstorm was brewing on the horizon.

After we left the book sale, we headed back downtown and met up with Aunt Leslie and Uncle Claude, who had just arrived and were starting to visit the stalls along Main Street. While we went one way to find something to eat, Becca took off with her aunt and uncle.

Bizzy and I, along with Mom and Grandma Nancy, had just finished eating, trying to stay dry beneath the awning at Ray’s Superfoods, when Claude, Leslie and Becca came walking up. From a distance, we could see Becca was carrying something, which looked like a laundry basket filled with straw. The same thought crossed both our minds at the same time.

Oh, no!

“I won!” screeched Becca gleefully. Leslie and Claude both sported grins on their faces. “How in the world did you do that?” Bizzy asked Becca, as we cooed and awed over the cute little bunny in the basket. As Leslie and Claude explained, Bizzy and I looked at each other, consternation and confusion written all over our faces.

It seems that Becca had asked Claude and Leslie if she could play the game. Claude, thinking, ‘There’s no way she can win this!’ went ahead and paid $3 for 15 Ping-Pong balls.

Becca had pitched the first few balls, singly, to no avail. Claude then suggested she toss all the balls at once, and before the Carny could tell her otherwise, Becca lobbed the handful of bouncy balls toward the kiddie pool. As the balls bounced and ricocheted, one landed in a glass.

The Carny, who said he’s never had a winner in years, let Becca pick out a bunny.

“Can I keep Lucky? Can I?” Becca asked, naming the bunny for the luck of winning her.

The drive home lasted only a few minutes. The conversation in the car concerned how to care and keep the bunny. As I tried to figure some way out of the situation, I looked at Biz and said, “I don’t know if this is going to work.”

“This is what you get for not letting her have a pet fish,” Biz retorted. We both were at a loss as to where to go with this.

Aunt Leslie helped, some. “You can use the cage I got for Bella,” she said. Bella was the previous, newest addition to the family, a vivacious Pomeranian puppy that will bite just about anything, including bunnies.

“What about Abe?” Becca asked from the backseat, holding and keeping the bunny calm.

“Abe will just have to stay next door at Grandma’s for now,” Bizzy said. She and I looked at each other, thinking the same thing. Would Abe kill the bunny?

Abe is an adventurous, black, Pomeranian/Dachshund mix, the alpha male of the Bass Lake compound. Recently, Abe had an altercation with a young possum and won, killing the possum in the process.

“What about DeeDee?” I asked, trying to concentrate on my driving, worrying still about how to care for a bunny. Even though I was expressing concern for the dogs, their well-being was the least of my worries.

I’ve never been any good at caring for bunnies. Bunnies die while in my care.

When I was a kid living in Kentucky, my dad brought home three rabbits for us boys to care and nurture. Even though we felt they were our pets, my dad had ulterior motives.

“Rabbits make for good eating,” he told us at the time, much to our chagrin.

I saw that same chagrin on Becca’s face when I said her Uncle Russ texted the same thing as we were setting up the bunny cage.

“Uncle Russ says he’ll show you how to skin and cook the rabbit when it’s time,” I said.

“We’re not eating Lucky!” she exclaimed.

Lucky is the name she gave her rabbit.

But when I was kid, my brothers and I were tasked with the care of those three bunnies, my dad had brought home. We did what we could to take care of them, and fed them what we thought we knew they ate: lettuce and carrots.

Bunnies eat carrots, right? Bugs Bunny does. What’s up, Doc?

Well, we were wrong, and three weeks later, all three bunnies had died – of starvation. A friend had come over and told us that we had to feed them other kinds of food.

Like what? I asked.

Bunny food, he said. The kind you get from a feed store.

So, Bizzy and I consulted an expert on the care of bunnies: one of the floor guys at the local hardware store.

He set us up with bunny feed, food dish, water bottle, and the like. Because he worked for our school district part time as a bus driver, and had great respect for our family, he even gave us his discount, after chuckling at our situation.

On the way back home, we decided to stop at the pet store. Yes, Knox even has a pet store. Come to find out, the owner raises rabbits at her place. We told her of our situation.

“That would be old Mo, the Carny,” she said. “He came by this morning and bought several of my rabbits. You probably have one of mine.”

She offered us some advice on the care of the rabbit, particularly about suspending the cage in the air on a stand with a pan beneath, so that the rabbit droppings would fall through the cage and be easy to clean.

We headed home, armed with the knowledge that we were severely inadequate to take care of a rabbit.

The next day, we moved the cage to the front yard, and put all the dogs next door at Mom’s. For the whole day, they whined and complained at the fence. We had tried to have them over the night before, when the rabbit was sequestered in the mudroom, safe from salivating jowls. All the dogs did was bark at the glass door, trying to get at our new guest.

A day without the dogs, and Biz was ready to discuss our situation.

“I don’t think we can keep the bunny,” she said. As we discussed the situation, we came up with a plan, while Becca sat in a chair by the bunny cage most of the day. At one point, she had taken Lucky out and was holding her, and the rabbit squirmed, and scratched Becca on the arms.

Biz gathered up the nerve and sat Becca down.

She explained the situation. “If we have the rabbit, we won’t be able to have the dogs around.” Becca’s eyes grew wide. Having the dogs around would cause too much consternation among the animals, she said, to have them be able to interact in peace. Our dogs just weren’t used to having another critter in the family.

So, we came up with a plan.

In the end, Becca and Bizzy took Lucky to a farm to live. One of Bizzy’s students, a young lady who will be a senior next year, offered to house Lucky in one of her rabbit hutches, and offered to have Becca come and help out at her farm whenever Becca wanted.

Becca was sad in the beginning, and shed lots of tears over losing Lucky.

Then, she put on her bathing suit and jumped in the lake.