Rabbit

WORDS BY PHILIP, BRIDIE AND CAROL IN MEMORY OF FLUFFY

Quietly at the frontdoor with a glint in his eye.

Guardian at the doormat.

Very fond of carrot sprays, the leafy ends, not the vegetable itself.

We minimise carrot intake as not good for plip-plops.

He is a soul inside a firm body.

Warm to hold in your lap.

Never says a word, but you know he might want to say something.

Placid.

Some claim to have heard him speak.

Completely black like something friendly about the night time.

Midnight.

Even his eyes, black.

But his fur also brown underneath, auburn-like.

When we look very closely.

Hops out of the way when you come near.

Likes to hide in his closet when you have to change the hutch paper.

His nose sticking out.

Able to leap at will great distances, once placed on the ground.

Sits still.

Likes to sit on a couch in the warmth and not move for ages.

Never can be sure what he is thinking.

Enjoys the cat’s company when she comes round the corner.

She visits when the humans are away all day.

He likes the company.

Peers through the hexagons of wire at his hexagonal world.

The cootamundra keeps him cool in summer.

She sits on the armchair beside him.

He is cool from sharp rays under the lovely shade cloth.

Sucks ferociously on the water bottle.

Sometimes leaves water all over the floor.

Arthur built the hutch out of some stuff he had lying around.

Sturdy palings and solid foundations and perfect stretches of wire.

Gaps for the droppings to fall through.

Plip-plops.

Arthur said we could hose it down.

A little bedroom or closet for cold nights and snoozes.

Always impossible to say when he might be taking a nap.

Sitting with his paws at rest.

There is the garden setting.

In the run he goes backward and forward for an escape.

When he gets out everyone dashes about in a state.

He never gets under the fence.

Most times he is too busy digging a hole.

He wants to dig holes.

Big holes which he creates in no time flat.

We go round asking the neighbours where.

He never wants to run away.

But sometimes we fear he might get lost.

Maybe he just wants to sit in the hole.

Maybe to him it’s just a game.

He loves sitting on the bare earth.

Earth is soothing.

We find him in the shed or under the fallen timber, digging.

He makes no effort to avoid us.

Up in the air with all fours he is returned to his home.

A happy outcome.

Would never survive five minutes in the wild, or out in the street.

Sits chewing some pellets.

Once on his own he mulls things over.

He is a hermit in his hermitage.

We come and visit him.

The wisdom he imparts is to hold your ground.

Stay where you belong.

Learn the beauty of silence.

He is extremely clean.

It is not apparent when he washes but he’s always clean.

The black glossy fur is like the sea in the sun.

The swell is smooth and seamless.

His floppy ears are always silken.

Like silk ribbons.

Sometimes he goes to the sea.

On the decking at Wye River he gazes out at the horizon.

It is very refreshing.

Exhilarating.

Bowerbirds scarcely glance in his direction.

There is a seed cake to nibble on.

We watch him through the panes of glass.

He watches us, sometimes.

His lop ears reach almost to the ground.

Most times his tail is very discrete.

Rarely does he cause a scene.

Except when the newspaper is rough.

Or he hasn’t enough fresh grass taken from the wayside.

He jumps at our hand and nips us if he is cranky.

When his paper is being changed.

He scratches and jumps about making chaos.

He came from Victoria Gardens.

Of all domestic rabbits he is one in a million.

No one may compare to him.

His silences are long as a summer evening.

He sits in the corner like it’s no-one’s concern but his own.

He is not concerned.

He lopes over to deposit some more roundy plops in his tray.

Even at the bathroom he is dignified and indifferent.

Black fur bristles in the light breeze.

With his tray he is 90% accurate.

That is, 10% inaccurate.

Which is pretty good going for a rabbit.

High ratings.

His paws have lovely pads due to evolution.

Little fur comes out between the padlets.

He misses the earth his forebears sat upon since before time.

Arthur’s floor is custom-built but is not sandy.

It is made of sturdy planks.

Thoughtful at rest.

Fluffy watches the humans carry on like idiots.

Later they admit to one another they were idiots.

He chews some very good food mix, consistency of muesli.

Who knows what he wishes.

Sometimes he ails and we take him to the vet.

He gets a pill-pusher and some pills.

He is told to eat more straw and pellets for roughage.

But he loves the other seeds.

Particularly the coloured fruit pastilles.

Whatever, is he worried?

Sometimes we have to trim his nails.

Very carefully.

If we aren’t careful his nails bleed, if we trim too low.

Also, we have to spray him for mites.

He is happy to be sprayed.

We rub his tummy.

He likes that.

Fluffy freakout!

This occurs when a cockroach enters the hutch.

When he has a digging tantrum.

When things are less than satisfactory for a rabbit.

When attention must be drawn to the water level.

It’s bad.

Floor paper rises up into paper cathedrals.

Bowls of grain are tipped over.

He runs around in circles.

Straw is tossed in disarray.

The world must be brought to order by his humans.

Smoothing of the black coat.

Placing in the large armchair.

Filling of the water feeder.

Gentle words.

Fresh paper, fresh everything.

Or, if clement, a hop in the run.

If we don’t carry him in our arms correctly he kicks.

Correctly is with all fours safely tucked under and body cosy.

He watches the garden go by.

Long slender grass is of special interest.

Sometimes we sing him a song.

We change the words of some pop song by Neil Sedaka.

Oh Fluffy I am but a fool!

To avoid Fluffy freakout in the car, hang cloths on windows.

He sits quietly.

His carry-coop is neat.

Mozart from the radio and human voices calm him down.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Fluffy likes to nibble his seedcake.

The Western Ring Road, interesting.

He watches the You Yangs go by with minimum stress.

Visits to the vet, no worries.

The nose is the most active exterior feature.

The heart and the nose work at all times.

Twitches are moderate, steady, or rapid.

Even slow twitch is regular.

No twitch is a bad sign.

Twitch of nose causes the cat to run out of the kitchen.

The nose is primal.

Standing on his back legs the first thing we notice is twitching.

His nose cleaves the air.

He is like us, a creature of this one Earth.

Flight might be interesting, but the ground is good.

We will all go back there one day.

Sometimes there is a breakout and we don’t know.

We walk down the path with our washing.

There he is sitting outside staring up at us.

Even the slightest gap can be slithered through.

It is just a game.

He will always come back.

Twitches at the sight of us.

He is a peacemaker.

The sun shines in his eyes softly.

He gazes up at the moon like you or me.

Up is where the moon is because he bends his neck.

Witness of the street.

Presence on the veranda.

Children visit and want to pick him up.

They lift the hutch roof and stare into his black fur.

Humans do this for quite some time.

Adults must tell children not to poke the rabbit.

Poking is unpleasant.

Adults are charmed by the presence of a rabbit.

Children are excited.

They want to carry him around and see if he will jump over things.

He doesn’t.

He sits quietly.

A charmed child may watch the rabbit for half an hour at a time.

Adults like him to sit on their lap while they gabble on about nothing.

But then he starts digging into their knee.

This is the sign of things to come.

Namely, he has to do Number Twos.

They plop him quickly outside.

Then continue gabbling about something or other.

Rabbits don’t gabble.

This one doesn’t.

He keeps his own counsel.

He dreams of more carrot top at supper time.

This is not Beatrix Potter.

No one is hiding under a flowerpot.

No one has left their jacket to be hung in the vegetable patch.

Australia is overrun with rabbits.

Not lop-eared black rabbits, but lithe brown English rabbits.

They are an absurd nuisance.

Their ears stick up.

They even gambol when the cat is away.

In his hutch he sometimes puts paper on his head and runs around.

His hutch is a stately pleasure dome.

Well, not a dome but a sloped roof.

The stand is two solid timber blocks.

These are joined at the base by lengths of hardwood.

The floor is perfectly parallel separated planks.

At one end Arthur has fashioned a cell for the rabbit.

It has an opening for exit and entrance.

Also a tin roof so nothing can fall in there, twigs, rain.

The rest of the slope roof is wire net.

The roof lifts up and down.

It can be fixed in position by a metal rod, when we change things.

Ventilation is excellent in summer.

In winter on cold mornings he comes inside.

He is the person superlative.

Saturday the last day of May.

Today we had to place him in his new home.

In the front garden near the north fence.

We had a ceremony.

We visited his old homes, the indoor hutch, the run.

His favourite home, the veranda hutch.

Rigor mortis had already set in since Friday morning.

He was in a pillowcase with his feet sticking out.

There was deep respect.

Words were said.

Others had silent thoughts.

Above him we planted a Grevillea Superb.

Low, spreading, evergreen shrub.

Bears large, reddish-orange flowers all year round.

Grevillea banksii x bipinnatifida.

He is at rest in his long-lasting home.

We read out a celtic prayer about the wind and sun and rain.

We will miss him.

We will think about him again.

WORDS BY PHILIP, BRIDIE AND CAROL IN MEMORY OF FLUFFY