The Animals

Sometimes I feel like my life is straight out of a Farley Mowat novel.

I think this suddenly clicked through to my brain after I woke up in the middle of the night, fumbled my way downstairs while muttering something about my, "Fucking Bladder," flicked the switch in the bathroom, and grumbled a sleepy, "Hello"... to a black and white rabbit?

I should write a book: "The Rabbit in Our Bathroom"
Of course, the amount of information about the rabbit in our bathroom would be minimal, since there's not a lot to say on the matter. We have a rabbit in our bathroom. It just makes a catchy title.

No, I'm not quite sure why the rabbit lives in our bathroom (I'm not even sure what her name is. I just call her 'the bun'). She has a perfectly normal rabbit hutch outside, where our other (enormous) rabbit lives...but she is barely ever in there.

To be honest, I don't even know why we have rabbits. They're boring. And the bun tends to creep out guests who trot off to the little girl's room, blissfully unaware of the mammal that lurks behind the toilet (until it hops out and pokes their feet).

When I was younger, I always loved reading Farley Mowat's books, and wished I lived a life like him. For some reason, I never really noticed that as far as weird animal life goes... I did live a life like him.

Buddy is the reason why I stopped eating beef for two years: I was afraid I'd accidently eat him. His mom died when he was teeny, and so my uncle brought him back up to the house to raise. Big mistake. Buddy was full of love, and thought he was a human. He loved to play, and would run towards you and get into exciting wrestling matches. We have a photo of him wearing a sun hat, with a flower in his mouth. Finally, Buddy graduated from "living in the backyard" to "living with all the other cattle". This was fine and dandy, except that it turned out that he was rather dangerous.

If he saw you walking up the road, he'd run towards you, all ready for another wrestling match, just like old times. He'd then smack you with his head, and you'd risk a rather untimely death.

So Buddy had to go. And go he did. Someone out there ate him for dinner, and thought nothing of it.

Then there were the ducks. Ivy and Vanilla. The cutest little ducklings you'd ever see. They thought I was their mother, and they would follow right at my heels, no matter where I went. When they followed me, they'd make a high pitched "peep! peep! peep! peep!" non stop. It melted my heart. They loved to eat slugs, which I happily gave them. It was funny to watch them try to slurp down the sticky things, since they'd get their beaks all gooed together.

I went away for a weekend, and when I got home, Vanilla had died. My dad had lifted a rock to find some slugs for her, and had put it down. She had darted out underneath it, and the rock had crushed her. They rushed her to the vet, but there was nothing he could do.

A year later, Ivy died. I was away on vacation again when this happened. (S)he was almost full-grown at the time, and lived underneath the porch. Although (s)he was a muscovy duck (which are huge), an owl had somehow managed to nab him/her.

I ended up getting two more full-grown muscovies after this: Donald and Daisy. Daisy was a boy. Donald was a girl. Go figure. It turned out that they weren't quite as super-fantastic as my ducks had been. Daisy was psychotic, and would attack you without the slightest provocation. He'd hide behind things and ambush you, rushing out at the last minute with a woosh and a Slam! It was quite painful. My brother has scars.

The stories never really end. For example: One time I was fishing for shrimp, and as I lifted the net out of the water, a bird nest broke, and all the baby birds (barn swallows) tumbled into my net. We tried to return them to the parents, but it was a no-go.

I also had "The Gimps" - three gerbils with a psychotic mother who decided to chew of their legs. The babies were fine, and are now healthy adults, who like to slide along their cage like fuzzy little slugs.

I wonder if everyone's life is like this.