Death of a Bunny

Okay, so this might have very little to do about local food...but I had to write about it anyway, and after all I decided, this is my blog.

We buried a baby bunny today.

This afternoon, Jackie (my 12 year old mutt dog) caught a baby bunny. My oldest son saw that it was still alive and came running to get me (I was starting dinner as usual at this time of day). I ran outside, commanded Jackie to DROP, which he did, begrudgingly, and then put him up where he couldn't get it again. The bunny was still moving and breathing. I told the kids that it was likely the bunny wouldn't make it and that this was just part of the natural life cycle of things, but they insisted that we needed a box and blankets and we would try to nurse it back to health. As a side note, we had actually tried to do this with a baby bird that fell out of its nest, and although we did end up putting it back in its nest and not relying on our motherly bird skills...it did make it and grow up (as far as we know) to be a healthy adult. However, as my oldest son and I were searching for a box, my middle child ran to me to tell me that the bunny was officially dead. I asked him how he knew and found that he had touched the bunny and he didn't move. Once I picked up the baby bunny, I realized he had an injury, that we had been to that point unaware of, and was indeed, dead. I put him in the back with the promise that daddy would bury him when he got home. I thought that would likely be the end of it.

How wrong I was. The most interesting things about the initial reaction to the bunny was that the oldest child (a boy) was most concerned with the specifics and tangible things about the event. "where did Jackie catch the bunny", "where was a box big enough for the bunny" and about the death itself. My middle child said very little at the initial event (also a boy) and my third child (a girl) was most concerned that the bunny's "mommy will miss her". Very interesting. What was to follow I wouldn't have thought would happen in a million years. After we had dinner (and because this is a local food blog I will throw in that we had homemade flat bread with roasted ALL local vegetables, local goat cheese and homemade pesto with local cucumber, tomato, basil and carrot salad...and the kids ate EVERY bite), daddy went outside to dig a hole to bury the bunny. The kids were not about to forget this important step. J chose a site way back in our woods where he was hoping the ground would be softer (no such luck in this drought). All three kids had made pictures to memorialize this bunny. From a picture of the bunny with the word "death" written on it from my oldest to an in-descript scribbling from my third to a simple bunny with a heart and sun from my middle. J dug a hole, we put the bunny in, said a prayer (that all the kids repeated after me) and then put our memorials taped to old garden posts and taped to stones in the ground and walked away.

As we made our way back to the house, I noticed that that all three children were topless and wearing rain boots. This, I said aloud to J was how all funerals should be attended. I didn't mean literally that none of us should wear shirts and that we should all wear our rain boots. But that, literally, we should all come as we are, with our hearts on our sleeves, celebrating and mourning the life and the absence of life. The real shocker, however, was not at the funeral itself, for this we had been through with at least one other random animal that the pets had killed, but what came afterwards.

A little while later, J and I were cleaning the kitchen from dinner and the kids were cleaning up their artwork, when my oldest came to me and said "mommy, (my middle boy)>>>> needs your help". What's wrong I asked and came around the couch to find my middle child sobbing face down in a pillow. I held him for no less than 20 minutes while he sobbed, I mean sobbed, with tears streaming, red eyes and chest heaving. At first I thought, "this is strange, it is just some random bunny" and I thought about how this child is my most sensitive, my most empathetic, my most in-tune to nature and to those around him and that I was worried about him probably most of all. Worried that his high empathy would make him a miserable depressed child. But then, because 20 minutes of a sobbing child over a random bunny gives you lots of time to think, I realized how lucky this child was to have this sort of empathy and concern for other living things. The new thing these days is to be more "empathetic". People actually try to teach people empathy now....and here I am with a child that not only exhibits this trait but shows it towards everyone in a positive light. Why am I worried about this child, I thought. This child knows how to care for others, he knows how to share his emotions and he knows how to love. If we were all this way, our world probably wouldn't be in the state it is now.

How great it is to care not only for those that we are closest to, but to grieve and care for those we never had the chance to know or for those most consider insignificant. What a great gift this child will be to the world.