We started being more careful with the rabbit after that,
keeping him in his hutch rather than letting him run around the garden. But he stopped eating and started to shed fur. Whether this was from boredom or loneliness,
we decided that pending the purchase of new companion guinea pigs, we had to
let him roam around the garden, making sure to return him to his hutch at night
time. But the rabbit was hard to catch
and impossible to retrieve when he hid in small, dark places. One evening he escaped and hid under the
shed. We weren’t too worried about
leaving him – this had happened before and he always emerged in the
morning. But in middle of the night we
heard noises – some kind of screaming – from the garden. I couldn’t really get back to sleep, and in
the morning the rabbit was gone. Only a few
traces of fur were left in the grass.
I felt guilty about the guinea pigs (although the kids
accepted their loss quite calmly) but we were all upset about the rabbit. I looked for him in the garden for the next
couple of days. My four year old came
home upset, having thought to pick dandelion leaves for him, then remembering
he was gone. I had a similar moment this
morning when I cut the dry end off a cucumber I found in the fridge.
While I know this is trivial – animals die all the time – I’ve
found the guilt surprisingly difficult.
I was responsible for a domestic animal who couldn’t look after himself
in the wild, and allowed him to come to harm.
My wife (more upset than me – it was really her rabbit) said that’s just
how it goes. Animals are not objects,
you can’t control them and you can only look after them while they’re with
you. Keeping a depressed rabbit cooped
up in a hutch or run would have been the only other solution – and obviously no
solution at all.
I’m not sure I agree – there were other precautions we could
have taken – but ultimately I accept that there’s a trade-off here: control and
safety versus freedom and danger. And
the strength of my feelings shows that this applies not only to rabbits, but
also in a more profound way, to parenting and our relationship with our
children. (Incidentally, I just finished
re-reading Haruki Murukami’s Wind-up Bird Chronicle in which the
disappearance of the narrator’s cat prefigures the surreal and unexplained disappearance
of his wife).
I let my kids do things (climb high trees for example) that
I know make other parents quail. I have
a strong belief in letting children become independent and self-reliant, even if
that sometimes means they face setbacks, get stuck or hurt themselves. I focus on this belief as an antidote to my
other tendency to protect and control. But
how would I feel if the independence I give one day confirmed my deep-seated fears
by leading to real harm?
So an incident with rodents (and a leporid) has awoken
existential angst about parenting which I don’t know how to solve. In the meantime, we’re thinking about getting
a cat. You do have to let them out, but
I think I’ll feel safer with a carnivore that can jump onto rooftops.
