In Memorium

Varmint Silverthief Von Lopp died today, at the age of 9 years, several months. I don’t actually know how many months. When he came into my life,he was the size of a guinea pig. I counted backwards from puberty and decided he was born in mid-December of 2001, and later on when he started getting injections every other day, I gave him Keith Richards’ birthday, December 18.

He came into my life in convoluted fashion. Without getting into too much gruesome detail, my housemate returned from an errand to fetch dinner for our pet snake with a guinea-pig sized, gray and white, lop eared bunny instead, informing me it was the only small gray rabbit in a cage of large white rabbits, being sold as food. It charged out of the cardboard box and glared ferociously at the snake lurking behind the glass.

Faced with this tiny combination of adorability, vulnerability and hardcore attitude, I fell in love.

Shortly afterwards I found myself shopping for a large rabbit cage, and some rabbit food, and a rabbit brush, and rabbit water bottle, and several rabbit toys. I had decided that there was some mistake, that this was actually a Pet Rabbit accidentally sold as a Food Rabbit. There really is no difference. White lab rabbits, dwarf rabbits, lop eared rabbits. All the same species, all descended from European stock. But I figured I had a big guinea pig or something that could live in a cage, with a gravity bottle and an exercise wheel.

I didn’t even know if they could be kept as housepets. I soon discovered that yes, there were such things as House Rabbits. And that I was being incredibly naïve with this “cage” business. And that keeping an animal capable of speeds of up to 30 mph trapped in a box was … bad.

And I also learned that there were a great many rabbits in shelters, and that way too many people get them at Easter and then dump them after deciding they’re not worth the effort. There are groups, rabbit rescues, that try to save as many as they can that are dumped at animal control and find new homes for them. But usually they get euthanized.There aren't a lot of people who want to deal with rabbit lifestyle accommodations. I decided I was going to be one of those people. Once you decide you're gonna do something, do it all the way.

So I kept Varm in his box only when he wasn’t being supervised, and proceeded to wrap every wire in the house with gnaw-proof spiral cable wrap. I ordered a case of this stuff from Radio Shack. Applying it gave me blisters. It worked pretty good though, and Varm eventually gave up on even trying to gnaw wires, and gave me a break on gnaw-proofing new appliances.

Meanwhile, he ran around. He watched TV and listened to music. He went through a period of stealing things – shiny silver things – and we found little stashes around the house of dropped chains and bits of foil wrappers. He occasionally hopped three feet straight up, just for the hell of it. He spent several days carefully practicing a hop with midair reverse.

He was litter trained, and used his box faithfully. I wish I could say he didn’t destroy a lot of stuff around the house, but he did; couple thousand bucks worth of oriental rugs, various newspapers and books. I finally just started giving him his own texts to deconstruct so he’d leave mine alone. It was sort of satisfying watching him zealously shred a bad novel or election pamphlet.

I had him neutered about a week after puberty. Until then, no dangling arm was safe. He would lurk in the hall waiting for passing ankles, and he got jealous of my boyfriend and demonstrated the rabbit special ability of peeing on someone while running past them at high speed. Another one of those unique rabbit body language communication deals.

They communicate in body language. Quite expressively, I might add. Makes up for the fact they don’t vocalize, unless they’re in major pain. They also can’t throw up. This means you have to be careful to not let them eat anything unwholesome. This was rough because Varm was quite a gourmet, in addition to being a music lover.

Seriously. He would lie on my lap licking my arm at the tempo of the music that was playing. He liked things with lots of notes: bluegrass picking, surf guitar, slack key, Mozart. When he was small I used to regularly have guitar jams, and if we hit just the right peppy groove, he’d go nuts and start hopping around. He did the same thing when there were touchdowns on TV, or fanfares. Clearly he missed his calling as a celebrity, although he did get to be a Disapproving Rabbit once (during a failed attempt to take festive Christmas pictures).

As far as being a gourmet, Varm was spoiled with fresh organic produce. Cilantro was his favorite, although he also enjoyed carrot tops, and parsley. After he was eight or nine I started relenting a bit with the junk food, and during his last year, when he had trouble maintaining his weight, he got all kinds of decadent things (in small quantities): girl scout cookies, banana cream pie, cupcakes.

Here are some of the awesome things he did:

For several years, when I went to bed, he would come running at full rabbit speed into the bedroom, do a flying leap onto the bed, climb on top of my chest and lick my nose until I fed him a raisin. I can’t say this is the absolute best thing anybody’s ever done to me in bed, but it’s up there.

He taught everybody rabbit body language,including the cat. For example, when a rabbit wants to inform you that you suck, it will get your attention, then conspicuously turn its back on you. The cat learned this quite easily. Then there’s the one where they carefully regard something, then run away from it while shaking their back feet as though they’ve stepped in something disgusting. And the confrontational head butt, which is a little different than the pet-my-ears-now head butt.

He challenged vacuum cleaners. He would run right up and put his front feet on it like some kind of crazed environmental activist protecting the dust bunny sanctuary.

He growled. Since bunnies don’t normally vocalize, this was basically an aspirated sound, like saying “rrr” without touching your palate with your tongue. He first growled when the housemate left a mostly-empty box of Cheez-Its on the floor. Young Varm proceeded to wedge his head into the box while pursuing Cheez-Its and got stuck. He ran around panicking for a couple of seconds, probably with salt and/or crumbs in his eyes, until he escaped. For a very long time after, he would growl when he saw anything that looked like a red rectangular Cheez-Its box. Housemate had this red notebook he would hold up and Varm would bellow “rrr!”and charge straight at it.

He could throw things. He threw toys and other items he disapproved of, grabbing them in his teeth and flexing his powerful neck. The most memorable time was when he disapproved of my lack of promptness in cleaning his litterbox, and threw the litterbox scoop at me.

He forced one boarding place to do a redesign in the way they kept boarded rabbits. That was when he figured out how to climb and/or hop over a 3’ pen. On one occasion, he invaded the neighbors, chased them into their hide box and stole their food. On another, he made it all the way into the front office, perhaps to call for a pizza.

He had massive separation anxiety. When he was younger I could board him for a week or so at a time, but the second week he would get depressed and stop eating. Towards the end,when he needed his shots every other day, he had to stay with the vet, and I couldn’t leave him 48 hours without him going on a hunger strike and needing IV fluids. Bunnies pair bond for life. He bonded with me. And I bonded with him.

He loved people. He would come out to greet the grocery delivery guy, and when I took him out in public on a few occasions, he was always friendly to anyone who wanted to pet him. I even took him on public transit a few times, for non-urgent vet visits. He typically wound up with a crowd of admirers gazing through the pet carrier door.

He was gay. Every girl rabbit I tried to introduce him to provoked intense fury. Then I tried a boy rabbit, Jack. It was love at first sight, and they could barely stop kissing and cuddling and flopping down next to each other. After a couple months, things turned violent. Suddenly teeth were embedded in flesh. I separated them,hoping it would chill out, but it didn’t. After a few near misses and a couple painful bites, I took Jack back to the rescue.

And got Varmint a cat companion instead. A female cat. They got along fine. Not exactly cuddly, but they’d eat from the same plate and chase each other, and the cat liked to hold the bunny down like a kitten while licking his head.

He never bit me. Not when I was irrigating his wound post surgery. Not when I was tube feeding him during a couple of upset stomach periods. Not when I gave him his injections every day for several years, including a few screwups where I had to make a couple attempts. Not when I repositioned him at the end, to change a layer or two of the three layers of puppy training pads underneath him, and the spots on his hip that were just beginning to get raw were touched. He knew he could bite me, if he wanted to. He scraped the edge of his teeth against my flesh a few times. He bit Jack, and I saw him nip the cat a couple times, although he didn’t draw blood. But he never,ever bit me.

He used to lie around on the floor with his legs straight out behind him. He was a minilop, and they are bred to look stocky, chunky, solid. Underneath the fur they are actually slender and graceful and streamlined. He would lie all stretched out when the weather was hot – he hated hot weather – his stubby little legs sticking straight out behind, his lop ears stretched out on the floor, a sulky look on his face.

He had a very expressive face. Disgust, delight, jealousy, sadness, boredom, love, fury. He could communicate all that and more with a few gestures and a flash of his eye.

For the last few months he smelled like pee, and I got pretty much desensitized to rabbit pee. Toward the end he was drinking half his weight in water every day, and peeing constantly. I was bathing him in the sink every couple of days, then carefully blow drying him, low setting, warm, several inches away – it took at least an hour. Then he'd pee all over himself again. But before he smelled like pee, he had this clean dusty scent, like a plush toy from a carnival booth – a little scent of hay, a little scent of basil or cilantro or whatever greens he’d been eating, a little bit of house dust from communing with the dust bunnies under the furniture. He’d put up with me holding him and burying my face in his fur for approximately 30 seconds before going into macho non-cuddly mode.

He’s partially responsible for my addiction to WoW. Chronic medical care, separation anxiety, um, yeah, I’ll be available to raid every night. Actually yeah, all my characters are named after rabbits.

He’s responsible for ending my addiction to WoW. I haven’t really logged in much in the last few weeks, while doing my intensive care stuff. During that time I’ve pretty much reflected on whether I really care about continuing with it. My social group morphed into something different (the other night I noticed they even took the bunny off the tabard). I’m not really tied to the house as much now the bunny is gone. So I dunno what I’m going to do about WoW, but I think the party may be over.

He saved me from moving to a place I really didn’t want to move to, with snow and stuff. I mean, I really seriously thought about it. But I had this little fragile rabbit with a medical condition, and so I stayed here. Good call. I like it here.

He taught me that having a house so peaceful that rabbits feel perfectly at ease lounging around in the open with their legs out behind them is far, far, far better than living in a house where there’s lots of arguing and drama and loud (see ex-husband).

He taught me that, in fact, a rabbit can be far preferable to a husband/boyfriend type person. For one thing, rabbits don’t talk a whole lot, and besides that, they’re cute. I had always been so busy being in relationships that I hadn’t really had a chance to see what it’s like not being in one. And you know, if everybody realized how great it is to be single, the species would die out, and that’s why we have all this peer pressure to pair off. Of course, if I had always thought this way, I would never have had an ex who unexpectedly dumped a boa constrictor on me in the first place.

Goodbye, little rabbit. You will be severely missed. I could tell you were right at that point where you just couldn’t get comfortable, and it was only going to get worse. I will keep your memory alive by growling at things that need to be growled at, and by continuing to use rabbity aliases wherever possible.

There will be no formal memorial service; his ashes will be scattered in Hawaii. If this very long ramble – fueled by several inches of vodka, and if that fires up a migraine, bring it on, maybe it’ll distract me from being sad—has amused, or touched, or affected you, consider giving a couple bucks to a rabbit rescue in his memory. Or just basically be a person who is nice to animals.