May 20th, 1977
August 23, 2007
“today we went to Rosies house to see the bunney rabbits. there names were Easter, Suny, Sunshine and Nibbles. I’m getting Sunshine on Monday.
to day we had a test on Asia. I hope I passed.”
This was my second rabbit. My first was Mr. Bunny Rabbit, named after the rabbit puppet on Captain Kangaroo. I got him from a kid in my class named Jeff Ruffner. They were having a yard sale at their house one day and happened to be selling some rabbits too. Mr. Bunny Rabbit was sort of wild and a little on the mean side. Not the ideal pet for a little girl. Eventually, we let him go out in the hills of Valencia, before Valencia was choked with suburban sprawl. Sunshine turned out to be a really cool rabbit. She was a brown and white Dutch rabbit. She was super friendly. We would let her out to run around in the back yard and she would do things like untie my Dad’s shoelaces when he was working under one of our cars. We let her in the house occasionally and would even use the cat’s litter box. Everyone really loved this little rabbit. Then one Sunday, something bit her face and it swelled up. I was really, really upset but my parents said they couldn’t do anything. The next day she was dead. We were all very crushed at this loss. I am not sure how they were able to make a decision not to find a vet that was available. Was it just before there were 24 hours veterinary hospitals in every neighborhood or was it that they just didn’t want to pay for an expensive visit to the vet? That must have been hard for them to see me full of such anguish and worry at such a young age.
Our teacher had us memorizing all the countries and their capitols, continent by continent. I don’t remember studying Asia and I don’t remember if I passed this test or not. I do remember though, that when we went over the countries of Europe, Dan Marshall and I were the only two people who knew the country Wales right off the bat. We sat there wildly raising our hands in the air, each one trying to get our teacher to pick one of us to shout out Wales.
Spelling and grammar horrors still abound!
August 24, 2007 at 6:18 am
Sad about Sunshine.
When I was about 5, my parents found a dead cat flattened in the corner intersection. It was black-and-white, like our cat Bones, who had been missing for at least a day. Dad scraped the dead cat off the road and brought it home in a shoebox. I insisted on looking at it and pronounced it “not our cat.” I remember telling my father that the cow-spot pattern was wrong, and the poor dead cat’s nose was the wrong color. My father, being logical and an adult, said something along the lines of “It must be her.” I was not convinced.
So my father buried the cat in our back yard, and, for another day, I insisted that Bones was still alive. A day or two later, Bones returned home with no apparent injuries. As a child, the “I told you so” moment was priceless.
The cat lived for another five-or-so years and then contracted feline leukemia and had to be put down. A vaccine had not been invented at the time. Still, she had a good life.
December 20, 2007 at 1:30 am
Damn what a beautiful trust-your-instincts story, MKC (whoever you are).