“The floor isn’t food here!” complained our pet rabbit.
It was a complaint I knew was coming. I couldn’t realistically pretend otherwise. So I said, “I agree with you.”
He sat up and rested his front paws on the cage, the traditional pose for indicating this was a major issue or it was dinnertime. “So make it better!”
We had taken him outside a couple days ago, when it was warm and sunny and we had some work to do on the yard. So we set up his pen and then pulled him, against his express wishes, into the pet carrier for the trip outside. Once there, and convinced that we weren’t going to take him anywhere in the car, he came out of his shell, or at least the carrier, and judged that this was all not intolerably bad.

“You don’t want me to do that.”
“I know it means going in the box but it’s so short a ride in the car I’ll forgive it!”
“Yes, but it’s cold out today, and it’s rainy. You wouldn’t like having water drizzling all over your body all the time you’re out there.”
“I’m not scared! I drink water all the time.” It’s possible we haven’t let him outside quite enough to understand.
“You’d hate it. It’d tamp down all the fur you were planning to shed for a couple days and nothing would get into the air. It’d set you back by days.”
“Oh.” He’s still recovering from when we vacuumed out his cage, filling nearly two bags and reducing the amount of fur in the room not at all. “Are you fibbing?”
“ … Fibbing?”
“Because you’re afraid of what I’ll do out there!” I brushed his head, which made him squinch his eyes a little, and made enough fur shed that I had a loose glove when I took my hand off. He shook it off and said, “I’m ferocious!”
“I saw you out there. You really mowed down those dandelions.”
“I ate a tree!”
I nodded, but, “Technically.”
“All the way, too, leaves down to roots!”
It was a weed maple, something with about two leaves and maybe three inches tall, including the roots. It’s been a banner year for weed maples, with something like four hundred thousand growing in the driveway alone, and their getting even denser on the ground where there’s dirt or soil or older, less self-confident plants to grow on top of. We don’t know why; maybe it was the harshness of the winter, or maybe the local innovation center gave the maples a seed grant. Anyway, our rabbit had spotted it as a thing, and hopped over, and started eating before we could wonder whether he ought to be eating itty-bitty little maple trees.
He noticed how impressed I wasn’t. “Did you ever eat an entire tree?”
This seemed like something I’d have to answer no, but, could I be quite sure I hadn’t ever eaten something which could be taken as equivalent to a tree? I thought about whether eating an acorn could qualify as eating an acorn tree, except that I couldn’t think of myself eating an acorn, unless I did it when I was very young and so put anything in my mouth. Later, of course, I’d realize that I have eaten apple seeds, and any definition by which acorn-eating qualified one for tree-eating status would be satisfied by apple-seed-eating (I don’t share a birthday with Johnny Appleseed for nothing, though I haven’t got much out of the coincidence), but that’s the kind of idea that comes to me too late. This sort of thinking is why it can take me up to five minutes to answer a question such as “would you like to buy this pair of pants?” There’s too much to ponder about the issue of “like”.
“Look, even if it weren’t pouring out, it’d be unfair to take you outside because you scare the squirrels.” And this is without exaggeration true. There are normally anywhere between two and fourteen hundred squirrels are in the backyard. When we took him out, the squirrels all vanished. Yet within a minute of his going back in, they’d come back. None of the squirrels said they were afraid of him specifically, but, they were.
“I’m ferocious!” he said. “But I’ll let squirrels share the floor with me. Tell them that.” I nodded, but he said, “Wait! I’ll share it just as soon as the floor is food again! Work on that first.”
I peeked in his dishes. “You’ve got lettuce left over from the morning. Eat that first.”
“But that’s just lettuce,” he said.
“You’re not hungry if you’ve got lettuce left.”
He hopped over with some ka-dunks that rattle the living room floor, and said, “I can eat whole trees.”
“Technically.”
“And any time I want.”
Ferocious, indeed.
What about eating cinnamon? Does that count?
LikeLike
You know, I’m not sure he’s tried cinnamon. We’ve got some cinnamon-yogurt-covered pretzels that he might sniff at and then suspect of being poison, though. And then eat.
LikeLike
I want a bunny. I reeeeaaally want one. Evil landlady.
LikeLike
Oh, bunnies are great. Or can be. They can also be a bit judgmental.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Can you provide an example of your bunny being judgey (or is it judgy)?
LikeLike
I’d say his most chronic issue is in where we sit on the couch. Mostly, he doesn’t want me sitting on the couch at all, because that takes up space he might flop out, and he’s uncertain about my love sitting on the couch because on the one hand this lets him sit on the pillow gazing up at my love; on the other hand, he could run laps from end to end on the sofa if nobody were sitting there. So mostly, we’re just sitting all wrong by his lights.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Poor, poor bunny and his hard life. I feel sorry for him. Maybe he should have his own bunny couch?
LikeLike
Indeed, he’s got a bed! Sometimes he flops out on it. Sometimes he noses underneath it to shove it around, for reasons he doesn’t explain.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Love the shot on the bunny. It makes him look GIGANTIC!
Also, broccoli could count for trees. When I was a kid I used to pretend I was giant eating trees when I was served broccoli.
How IS the bunny these days?
LikeLike
Our rabbit is in a pretty good mood, as rabbit moods go, since it’s the season when we bring a Christmas tree into the living room, and those things are good eating.
Our rabbit is a Flemish giant and, while small for his breed, he’s still from a big breed. He’s about the size I was through December of fourth grade, and if he put his mind to it he could probably move the couch out of the way.
LikeLike
How is judgey bunny doing? At least he’s not preachy bunny! 🙂
LikeLike
Well, he’s been ageing. We all do it, although he’s done more of it than most of us. And it’s been hard; he’s having trouble getting around now. This has its advantages, in that he does some adorably cute things to groom, for example, without relying on an arthritic leg. And he’s gotten to be a big hit at the vet’s office.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh boo. Sorry to hear this … but yes, it’s inevitable … we do all age. Except for vampires … I hear they are timeless. 😉
LikeLike
It’s a sad thing to ponder but, for now at least, he’s doing all right and is pleasantly grumpy. He’s in the air-conditioned bedroom right now, while the heat wave is on.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pleasantly grumpy … that’s kind of amusing. 🙂
LikeLike
Thank you. If there is a good side to our rabbit’s ageing it is that he’s reached the point everything that used to be a bit of a hassle to deal with has become endearing and charming. Even when he’s in a bad mood it’s delightful being around that.
LikeLiked by 1 person
: )
LikeLike