Legacy of the dead bunny

NEWCOTT: Legacy of the dead bunny
Chimes Opinions Article - 10/22/09

I have yet to explain to my roommates why exactly there's a dead bunny in the shoebox in our freezer, but I assume the less I say about it the better. Had this happened a year ago I probably would have used it as an opportunity to ward off my old roommate Jon from eating all my food, possibly along with a cryptic note written in newspaper clippings saying "You'll keep your PAWS off my bagel bites, if you know what's good for you." This time it's more out of necessity until my fiance's roommate finds a good time for a burial.

The problem I have had to come to terms with is that there's never a good time to have a burial, much less to remind someone else to have a burial, especially for their adorable dead bunny. No one wants to get a phone call in the middle of a romantic dinner to take care of the furry long-eared Popsicle that I've jammed behind the Eggo waffles. If only I had been fortunate enough to be responsible for the remains of someone's dead possum or pony, a bunny though? It's a sick world we're living in.

Beth and her friends gave the bunny to Claire on her 23rd birthday. Being a dwarf rabbit, the bunny was twice as cute as any ordinary bunny due to its small size and girlish charm, kind of like a Nintendo DS. The fact that she was so fresh from the pet store made her arrival all the more special. This, I suspect, must have driven our former dwarf bunny Johnson mad with jealousy. Could he have been the one to cause our new animal friend to meet her untimely demise? The evidence is inconclusive, especially seeing that I found the bunny stiff as a log in a very relaxed pose, but was it too relaxed? Only Johnson and our cat Geogie could ever know for sure.

Georgie is perhaps just as much a suspect as anyone. After an in depth research involving reading someone else's question on Yahoo Answers, cats apparently have the ability to hypnotize bunnies, to death. That's right, cats can literally kill other animals with their minds. That is messed up.

Whatever the case, now the bunny serves as the constant little reminder in the back of my mind, be it when I'm getting groceries or running to the bank, that death is all around us. Every moment I go to grab a Sunny D I hear its lifeless heart beating from behind the freezer door, it's cuddly paws clutching at my conscience. Every so often, I grab its cold body in my hands and am just inches from running out the door when I remind myself that I'll probably forget about it at some point in the afternoon and leave it's frozen body to defrost in the boiling interior of my car, most likely only to find it later among the possibly hundreds of other snacks, drinks, and animals I've left in my car earlier that week. The circle of life continues.

It's times like these that I'm glad my body won't be left in a college students refrigerator after I die, or at least I desperately hope not. Really makes you think. Now that the bunny has found her way to frollick on the giant carrot in the sky, she doesn't have to worry about what she left behind, and neither will we when it's time for us to go to our own respective giant carrots. It's down here that we have the problem letting go. Life's a fragile thing.