I’m a coward, and a hypocrite, and all before 8 in the morning.  It’s gonna be a long day.

I always swore I was going to be direct with my child about matters of nature and death.  I grew up hunting with my dad on one hand, and breeding cats with my mom on the other–I was never a child who had any illusions about animals, their place in the world or my dinner plate, or their deaths.  I think I’m pretty healthy, so my husband and I decided we’d raise our daughter the same way.

Until the baby bunny, that is.

This past weekend our post-war suburban neighborhood underwent something of an unprompted, unofficial ritual, the First Mowing of Spring.  It must have flushed out some wildlife, because yesterday evening we found a small juvenile rabbit crouching terrified in our lawn, not even enough instinct yet to run when people approached it.  The neighborhood is overrun with large cats; he wouldn’t have lasted the night.  And I have this thing about helpless infant creatures.  So sue me.

We followed Operation Wildlife’s instructions, caught it with a towel, didn’t let the kid pet it, didn’t feed it, and closed it up in a box, which we put on top of the fridge, out of the way of curious three-year-old girls.  Since their intake facility was closed when we called, we planned to take the poor thing in when my husband got home from work today.

Around 11 I was sitting in the living room enjoying a glass of wine and some Aqua Teen Hunger Force, when suddenly I look down and there’s a baby bunny on the floor.  WTF?  Checked the box–yeah, that’s our bunny.  So I caught him again, put him back in his box, weighted the top down this time, and poked some airholes. 

This morning Penny wakes up, and of course, wants to see the bunny first thing.  I open the box and . . . dead bunny.  Stiff, already.  Oh, shit.

“The baby bunny’s sick right now, baby.  We have to give him lots of quiet, so we can’t look at him now, okay?”

“Okay.”

Sick.  Yeah.  I wimped out.  Instead of being Spartan Mom, and explaining to her about how sometimes animals we try to help just don’t make it, I told her it was sick.  Then called my husband, and we conspired together.  The bunny will be “sick” all day, and he will dispose of it while she’s napping this afternoon.  When she wakes up, we’ll tell her Daddy had to take the bunny to the bunny hospital.

Well, hell.  I feel bad enough already about the poor thing dying in my care without the kid going around all day brokenhearted.  I’ll be Spartan Mom another day, perhaps with roadkill that wasn’t my fault.

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