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“He’s funky-looking,” my daughter remarks. She watches the baby run circles around the doe while
“No kidding,” I say. I pick him up to take a closer look. His eyes bug out, his ears are pointy, and his body is wide but flat as a table. On top of that he’s much smaller than the others and he’s a seal, to boot. Great. Nobody likes seals. I’m already thinking of the pet market.
He is an orphan. His mother was one of Anna’s nicest brood does. This time she only had two in the litter and the other had not survived. Three days after she delivered we found her dead in her cage. No warning signs, no explanations. I thought it might have been ketosis, but couldn’t be sure. We fostered this little buck to another doe with a couple of babies, but he had a difficult time. He seemed weaker than the others for the first week or two, and to be honest we didn’t expect him to make it. He remained frail and then came down with enteritis when he was a few weeks old. Luckily we pulled him through, and now he just seemed happy to be alive. He often bounced around the cage and ran circles for no particular reason.
I take him over to the table and try to set him up. He draws himself up and sits at attention…. He practically salutes. A natural poser. Too bad he doesn’t have the looks to carry it off! Mom Bunny has already chewed half his coat off to amuse herself, and he probably has the ugliest face I’ve ever seen on a Wooly. It’s short enough, but it’s -- well, just ugly. He has skinny, pointy ears and bug eyes. He looks like one of those pop-eye dolls you squeeze….
Anna takes a look at him. “Pet?” I ask. She doesn’t even hesitate. “Pet.”
A week later I’m shipping rabbits out to someone. I e-mail them a picture of Junior and offer to throw him in for free… After all, he does have nice hindquarters. (His only saving grace.) They e-mail back: “Thanks but no-thanks.” (What is the e-mail symbol for snickering... I think they used it.)
A couple weeks later we’re at a show. Junior goes up on the sale board for $20 as a pet, or $35 with papers. A couple customers open the cage to look at him, but he never even makes it out of the carrier. They look at me like “Okay, lady, what are you trying to pull here?”
Next week, next show. Junior’s price drops to $15. No takers.
Next show: He’s up on the board for ten lousy dollars. Someone actually looked at him… we got all excited. Then we lost ‘em. Rats. Okay, now I’m getting desperate. Junior’s taking up valuable cage space in the barn, here. Something has to be done. I go get an entry form to enter him in the show, just so we can get some remarks on him (remember, he has a nice butt…) so we can find a home for him. Anna refuses to put Junior up on the table with Her Highness’s show string…. So he goes in Open Class.
“Open class Jr. Bucks!” they call. I drop Jr. into a hole. The judge, who is setting up another rabbit, looks at him then looks at me…I almost apologize. “I’m just showing Anna’s leftovers,” I repeat to a friend, trying to save a little dignity here. “Just get on with it,” I think. I ready myself to have the judge toss him back, laughing, and prepare to slink away into the shadows. But… he wasn’t the first one off the table. He wasn’t the second. In fact, he got first place! (“This judge must be getting senile,” I think to myself.) My friends look at each other and give me “the look”. (“This judge must be getting senile,” they think to themselves.) I grab the remark card and run before they can file a formal complaint. Now we should be able to find this bunny a home.
Next week, next show. Junior’s up on the board for $15 again… after all, he has a first place win to his credit! No takers. His price drops to $10. No takers. Okay, I have another ugly bunny that needs a home and we are absolutely desperate for cage space … They both go up “Free Pets to Good Home Only!” A lovely family comes by looking for a pet bunny… I like them and feel they would take good care of a bunny so I show them our two candidates. ‘Darned if they didn’t take the other one…
Junior comes home and moves out to the horse barn in the “overflow” cages. Here is where brood does rest between litters, and pet quality bunnies wait for good homes. They are fed the same, sheltered the same, but they don’t get the doting that the show string and new litters get in the Rabbit Barn. Basically Junior just gets fed and watered and cleaned for about four weeks, and nobody pays much attention to him other than a scratch on the head when he’s fed twice a day. He seems content with his lot and even stops bouncing off walls and running circles.
Then one morning I’m feeding and Junior is hanging out the door waiting to be scratched, and he catches my attention. I pick him up and set him on a hay bale. His coat has come back in… in fact he has better texture than Anna’s other Juniors. His head is much rounder… he doesn’t look like he ran head-on into a wall anymore. Hmmmmm. I set him up. He salutes. I run my hand over his body… Omigosh! When did THAT happen? He’s built like a concrete block. “Width equals Depth equals Length”: the golden formula. He has it!
“Congratulations Junior! You’ve just been promoted to the Rabbit Barn again!” I tell him. He pops his eyes out at me.
Next rabbit show: Her Highness agrees to show Junior with her show string. She mistakenly puts him in the Senior Buck class, though he’s still a junior. He wins it. He wins Sr. Shaded Buck at another show, too. We check his papers and realize then that he could be in the Junior class, but she has a little Siamese Sable Jr. buck she wants to promote and (get this) doesn’t want Junior to beat him! Hahahahahaha!
So now Junior sits in the RABBIT BARN, on the TOP ROW, and gets to come out of his cage every day and Salute. His coat continues to get better, his head continues to get rounder, and his body is solid as a brick. We’ve changed his official show name to “Cygnus” (the swan) and we’re even looking at does that might cross well with him… And if one of his babies looks so ugly that we couldn’t give it away – we’ll just hang onto it for awhile. J |
we feed.
“He’s wired, too.”