On Monday morning my husband woke up and stretched. He pulled up the blind in our bedroom and announced 'The bunnies are out in the road!' WAHHHHHHHHHH!
Spike was on the front lawn - when I say 'lawn' I mean the little semi-circle of grass by our front door.
I hoofed it down the stairs, into the back garden grabbing the plastic carrier thingy and executed a sharp u-turn whilst grabbing the most favoured bunny treats. Slowing to a remarkably calm walk, I glided out of the front door and gently place the carrier down on the drive. Spike boinged into it and was 'hutched' pretty sharpish. So far so good.
There was no sigh of Nosy. None at all. I didn't want to call him because I didn't want my eldest son to hear me calling and to find out that he was missing. The driveways around we empty, the close we live in was empty. Nothing. I started to cry. My son appeared in the front door, 'Mummy, what's happened' he said in alarm. I cracked and sobbed 'We can't find Nosy'. My first born boy let out the deepest, most heart-wrenching noise that I have ever heard coming from deep inside him. We clung to each other, me stroking his head, sobbing that it would be okay, and him gasping 'Bunnies, bunnies, bunnies, I love them, Nosy, Nosy, bunnies', over and over.
My husband had rushed round to the neighbours to ask them to help, to see if they had got a small, grey, very nosy rabbit somewhere about their premises. By now my head was filled with images of endless fields, hedgerows and hills with a small bunny softy hopping his way to danger in a big wide, wild world. Spike was sitting silently in the run, not knowing what to do without his brother and soul mate.
Twenty long minutes pass as we silently walk around the driveways and front gardens.
"Look!!" shouted my lovely neighbour, pointing to one of the driveways. Nosy was sitting right in the middle, with his little one up/one down ears. Everyone rushed on mass towards him. "NOOOOOOO!" I shouted, 'STOP!". Running at rabbits means running rabbits.
I walked slowly towards him and he hopped over and right into the carrier I have put nearby.
This is it - the carrier. It is just an ordinary affair. My bunnies love it. It has nothing in it, no food, nothing, yet they can't wait to get into it. Why is that?
I have to admit that, there and then, with both bunnies safe, I crumpled into a sobbing ball of mixed anguish and relief, my son wrapped around the curve of my back, crying his eyes out.
My son is 11. He has 42 soft toy bunnies on his bed. He has always loved rabbits, and it is because of him that I started to make the sock bunnies. He is part-boy/part-bunny. It took us the best part of that day to recover, he and I, just talking over the awful feelings we had had and telling the bunnies over and over how much we loved them. They had wormed their way out of a small space where the hutch run meets the hutch itself. From now on, they will be closed into that hutch and I will be bringing forward the construction of their new, escape-proof, fox-proof all singing and dancing new home because I never want my boy to feel that pain again.
