Love Is What You Make of It

An Essay on Observation
by Greg Gunther

My family has a captive white rabbit. It arrived one day, unbidden, in a cage that someone put in the corrals behind our house. They could see that we had goats, sheep, chickens, and horses on our zoned-for-animals lot in this bedroom community, and figured that a spare rabbit would not be turned away. They were right.

My ten-year-old granddaughter named it Cheese for reasons of her own, and we put it in a bigger cage in her bedroom. On sunny days, we prop open the door to the outside deck, and let the bunny have a little bit of freedom.

The bedroom has a tile floor that's easy to clean, especially since he makes use of a litter box as a cat would. When Cheese is not in his cage, he has his little domain.

You would think he would have been happy, but he wasn't.

Oh, he let himself be petted, and nibbled people's shoes for attention, but he moped a lot. Listless like a depressive inattentive to his meds. We gave him kale and lettuce in addition to store-bought rabbit food, and never let his water bottle run dry, but something was missing.

And then, the white bowling pin appeared. It had been sitting on the shelf, a gift to my granddaughter on her eighth birthday. As often happens, when it fell off, no one bothered to pick it up. The bunny began playing with it.

That night, we heard thumping and bumping from the bedroom, and came to see Cheese pushing the bowling pin around, having a great time. It was almost his size, and the same color white. Later, we saw him licking it, nuzzling it, and finally becoming amorous with it. The bowling pin never complained.

Cheese no longer mopes. He loves his bowling pin, Bunnita. They're a lovely couple.