Now Playing: Please! Make Mine Chocolate!
Every year about This Time, I mention the good folks at Make Mine Chocolate.
Click on the button on the left and please visit their web-site! Support the message! Maybe even buy a tee-shirt or mug and help a bunny in need! But PLEASE, if you do nothing else, please read my story again this year and Help Spread the word - Bunnies Are Not For Easter!
Because Every year, I tell The Story about How I Came To Live In Our Warren. It is part of Our Lore - and as me,Hunny said, The Lore is important, because knowing where we've been can help us to know where we're going.
And so, The Story is Important, because Every year, there are still poor baby bunnies who are taken away from their mothers, stuffed into boxes and crates, and then shipped in trucks to pet-shops all over the United States where the poor little dears are sold as fuzzy Easter Toys.
Except we are *not* cuddly Easter toys! We are living, breathing, feeling pets who are going - full of Hope and Ignorance - out into the World to become loving members of a family.
And these poor baby bunnies - all jammed into crates and shipped along on the backs of trucks, delievered to pet-shops everywhere, just in time for Easter - these baby bunnies, so soft and adorable - are Me.
I was just One of Millions, An Easter Bunny Nobunny Wanted; A Bunny-Inna-Box; Another Cast-off Easter Toy...one of the thousands, the sad and lonely thousands that wind up in shelters and along road-sides, abandoned in public parks and left of any-wheres, all because hoomins don't realise that Bunnies Are Not Toys For Easter.
I'm one of "Those" bunnies - the Impulse Purchase, the "Awwww, isn't-he-cute! Let's-buy-him! How-much-trouble-can-a-bunny-be?" pet-shop bunnies - that later on grows up and begins to chew on stuff, or begins to need a larger habitat, or continues to eat food, or out-grows the Fuzzy-Bunny-Stage... and suddenly, nobunny wants him any more.
And then it's What To Do With the Rabbit? Because the Easter Bunny that was so cute in the pet shop window isn't a "bunny" anymore, it's a "rabbit" and it's not a traditional "pet" like a cat or a dog - it's a pest and a bore and not socialised, because it behaves like a rabbit, not like a cat or a dog...
And it's gone from "Awwww" to "Get it out of here!"
Because "everybody" wanted it, and now "nobody" wants to be responsible for it. It's a chore and a nag. Usually no one even remembers its name, and it's become "The Rabbit" or "The Damned Rabbit" or just plain "It". On Easter Day it was was "Fuzzy" or "Snowflake" or "Bugs" and everyone swore it would go to see the v-e-t, but times are tough and there's no money for "stuff like that'.
Pretty soon, there's no money for "stuff" like "it", the totally depersonalised rabbit. But by then "it" is confined to a tiny cage in a garage, or in a basement, totally dependant for it's food on the whim of a child or scraps from the kitchen... and maybe there's water and maybe there's not, and there might be some hay and the remains of a litter-box and no one can understand why the rabbit isn't cuddly and cute, and all "it" does is sit, all alone, in it's tiny cage, in the dark.
And no one comes by, no one talks to you, and you are OnAlone, with nobunny for you to care about and nobunny to care for you.
It is the most Horrible Fate that can befall a housebunny.
But lucky for me, the people who bought me as a Easter Toy shoved me into a cardboard box and abandoned me in some veterinarian's waiting room. And the secretary there called Maman and said,
"Would you take another bunny? Someone abandoned him in our waiting room, and he's too cute to put to sleep."
Notice the words - "Too cute to be put to sleep."
Maman says what was meant was, "If he stays here, we'll have to kill him." Because there are too many bunnies and not nearly enough room for all of them.
So Maman came and got me. She says sometimes God just slaps you onna back of the head and although it's not your veterinarian, and even though there is only a very litte extra room at Our Warren, you know you have to go get the bunny.
And I remember when I arrived: me,Hunny was the Ancient Elder of His Kind, Poet was 12 years old and almost as old as Hunny. Belinda had cancer. Clover and Beebe-Bunny!! hadn't bonded yet, and MissyBun kept looking at me like I was some kinda Invader. Then Dadda gave me these green and long things he called "Salad" and I thought they were tryin' to poison me onna'count obba Fakt I'd never seen "Romaine" before and....
But the greedy breeders keep on forcing captive female bunnies into having more babies, and then they tear the babies away from their mothers to sell. And all over the country, souless hoomins are exploiting bunnies for profit - right at this very moment! - taking babies from their mothers, shoving them into crates and loading them on to trucks. And there are trucks cannoning down the highways with bunnies-in-the-back - tiny, fuzzy, baby bunnies - who are living on hope, because they have nothing else!
And those bunnies are bound for pet-shops everywhere. They'll be set up in windows for people to walk past and see and go "Awwww! Look at the bunny! Let's buy one! How much trouble can a bunny be?"
And come June, July or August, and the shelters and parks and v-e-t's offices will be filled with rabbits. There will be listings in the papers, "Rabbit! Free to good home!" and no one will even care if the "new home" inclueds a hungry snake.
Because, you see, Easter is No Fun for a Real Bun!
The real meaning of Easter has to do with New Life and Salvation, not with sending babies to their deaths. Easter is about Hope and Faith, not about trafficking in lives and causing misery!
So please, please - if you read this blog - remember to save a life this Easter and Make Yours Chocolate!
-------------------------------------- By George