TW: Abuse, animal suffering, neglect
I’ve been dreaming a lot about the rabbits lately. My father loved to play cruel jokes. One such prank was giving us a male and a female rabbit before going back on duty - and telling us they were both male.
Not knowing that one could become pregnant, we had no safety net in place for them - literally. We made a chicken wire cage for them to live in. It was raining hard enough to wake me up one night. I feared for the rabbits, so I crept downstairs with a towel to keep them warm. Under the wisteria, the rain collected along its blooms in long, heavy drops, there was so much water on the patio I splashed as I stepped.
Approaching their hutch I noticed one of them was frantically running around in circles. She held my attention until I noticed the babies. Under their cage, in the inch of water that collected on the red brick patio, lay about a dozen tiny, pink bodies.
I immediately scooped them up and tried to warm them with the towel. The mother’s eyes on me as though I could change anything. In the towel I could see, they were all dead. The movement I thought I saw was just their tiny bodies swirling with the drops of rain that collected together at the bottom of the heavy wisteria blooms before dripping down.
The door behind me opened and my mother came out. She was shocked to learn what I had in my hands. Those cold, pink babies in a pile in my lap, me wailing. As soon as she realized I was not hurt and pieced together what had happened she started to laugh at me.
She thought it was funny. “Oh no, those are not both boy rabbits after all!” And then took the towel from me, “We will have to fix the floor of that cage so that doesn’t happen again.” and led me back inside.
The rabbits haunt me.
I dream I have found tiny baby kittens or bunnies or puppies and they are so tiny they fall through my fingers and disappear in the carpet. In fevers I see them.
Those few moments while I was alone with their bodies I felt so many emotions. My mother could not explain any of them to me. She patted my hot cheeks and chortled, finding my sorrow somehow humorous. How could she just throw them in the trash like that? As though something horrible had not just occurred.
The next day we lined their cage with newspapers and stuffed the holes with rags. I held the momma rabbit while the upgrades were made. I nuzzled her face. Could she explain to me how I felt? I deeply wanted to understand… why did my chest feel so tight? How was it that I could not eat breakfast? Why had I not been able to sleep? Her bright pink eyes blinked at me without revealing a single clue.
By the time my father returned from his tour of duty we had almost 50 rabbits in our care. I tended them, gave them fresh water daily, tried to learn how to tell them apart. Endlessly making up new middle names and grand titles.
We lived two streets away from a canyon that ran along one side of a local park. One morning after coming home, my father took some plywood, ringed it around the inside bowl of a wheelbarrow, piled the rabbits high within the makeshift carrier, and invited me to go for a walk with him.
It wasn’t until he turned the wheelbarrow on it’s side at the top of the canyon, that I understood what we were doing. The joke having been made, he dumped them into the canyon, their usefulness done.
I started crying and once more, I was comforted with laughter. “There is no use crying, they’ll be happy out here… or chow for coyotes!” To which I cried even harder.
The walk back home was punctuated with hollow, clanking sounds of the wheelbarrow, the rattling plywood, and my deep, heavy breaths hitching in my chest, through hot tears.
I could tell you within thousandths of an inch - what the different smiles on my father’s face meant. And the one he was showing now warned that he would not find this funny much longer and that I would do well to be quiet.
My parents spoke about the rabbits as though it was a chore completed with no more ceremony than dusting the coffee table. The hutch was put in the trash and it was my job to sweep the sawdust and rags up and into bins. Standing over the bricks, numbly moving the broom around, I was more confused than ever before.
How could you just throw them away like that? Were they safe now? What will they eat? How will they know to find water? I never taught them anything!
The last thought hung in my head, like a bell ringing. They were so helpless! I never taught them anything. They have nothing.
“My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today“
When most people talk about their experience with Watership Down, they mention the violence, the blood, and the abuse. All of those things I was already keenly aware of, being daily staples in my house. When I remember Watership Down I am grateful that it taught me more about grief, sorrow & loss & love and hope than I ever learned from my family.
The story wove its way into my brain with painful pricks of needles along the way. Nobody else in my family could understand why I cried so hard watching it. And I couldn’t understand why none of them would cry at all.
What things made me feel the deepest ache was the hope for restful peace & companionship the tale promised. At the end, when the main character is led into the sun to a beautiful afterlife - that broke me. I never believed anything could ever get better.
I knew this work was trying to teach me something. I felt it inside my chest, behind my lungs, under my belly. An ache, a yearning. A feeling of recognition. Here was a story that was filled with all those emotions that mystified me and defined me. I understood that in the world there were people who could feel like I did and talked about things that really happened and yearned for things that really mattered. I finally understood all those feelings I had that cold, wet night.
Eyes brimming, I would look around the room & wonder why nobody else saw what I did. But then, they didn’t hold the pale, cold bodies of newborn bunnies after they slipped through the cracks. And they didn’t think twice about abandoning the rest of the family in a canyon of certain death when they were done with them.
Roe Vs Wade was overturned this week. I’ve been dreaming about the rabbits almost every night since. No matter how many times I replay it in my sleep I can never save them. They are still limp in my tiny hands. They are still tossed into the trash.
Many years later I asked my dad why he gave us the rabbits and he told me that he thought it would keep my mother busy. When I asked why he dumped them, he said he was home again so he didn’t need them anymore.
Without access to healthcare we will see higher maternal mortality rates, lack of care for complicated pregnancies, and criminalization of lifesaving care. Those children who are born to families that can’t care for them will never thrive and flourish the way planned pregnancies could. Pregnancy will be used to harm mothers and people who have uteruses. Rape will be enough to chain us to a predator for life. Women are already having their children given to their rapists and forced to pay child support to their attackers. When abusers are no longer interested in the targets of their abuse they will simply abandon them into a system that has no care or concern for them. Feeding a never ending supply of vulnerable targets to a world of eager abusers. A national supply of infants and pregnant people, forced into suffering at the whims of men.