So, it’s late, about 10:30 p.m. and we’re watching some of last week’s shows on the DVR. Tona’s been outside, but because it’s been raining off and on, we don’t want to leave her out there too long, or she’ll become a muddy mess because the crazy dog doesn’t know enough to stay on the porch. If she looks at us longingly from the door and we ignore her, she goes out and finds something to destroy.
Normally her destruction revolves around Jocelyn’s toys. This time it was so much worse.
Scott goes to let Tona in, but she’s not on the porch, and unlike normal, she’s not coming barreling through the door when called. I’m thinking she finally jumped the fence or she choked on a piece of collar (because just hours before she slipped her collar and decided it was an appetizer). Scott asks me to go grab his phone so he can use the flashlight app (this one’s better than you think, it turns on the flash, not the screen) because he thinks Tona’s got a rabbit. (Irony of ironies, the episode of “Chopped” we were watching on the DVR featured a mystery ingredient of rabbit kidneys. Who knew?)
I sat inside for a couple minutes, but then head out with a towel, so as soon as she barrels on the porch, I can dry her off and let her in while Scott handles the bunny rabbit. I hadn’t been on the porch 15 seconds when I hear “Tona, drop it,” (which was stupid because she doesn’t know that command yet) followed by the hideous squeak that comes from tiny animals when they are horribly maimed.
Better yet, Tona comes up onto the porch, and I have the towel open to catch her. Only her jaws aren’t empty. Oh no, the poor, defenseless bunny is still in her mouth. I hold the towel up so I can’t see the carnage, which makes me utterly worthless at this point. Scott comes running onto the porch still yelling “drop it,” at the dog who is ignoring him, quite happily.
Scott tells me to go inside, and I very gladly oblige and park my useless butt on the couch and continue watching “Chopped.” Nope, I wasn’t even nice enough to pause it for him. I stepped to the back door to see if he needed something at one point, but he told me no, and told me not to look at her.
I thought that comment was because she was covered in bunny blood, but no, she was relatively clean. He finally wrestled the limp, yet not lifeless, animal from the clenches of Tona’s jaws and brought her inside and put her in her cage, after giving her a stern lecture. I’m sure the lecture was to make Scott feel better.
Then Scott heads to the porch and the bunny is moving, trying to get away. Scott goes, “Oh man.” I was like, “What?” He goes, “It’s not dead.”
Now, here’s where it gets somewhat humorous. In an effort to make me feel better he says things like, “I think she was just trying to play with it.”
“It may not be hurt that bad, maybe a broken rib or something.”
“There’s not a lot of blood, I really think she was trying to play with it.”
“I’m waiting to see if it’s okay enough to set free.”
Now, look, I may be a bleeding heart, but don’t try to placate me like that. I know what happens.
He went outside, and came in moments later saying, “I hate decisions like this.” Well, obviously it didn’t only have a broken rib. Really, Scott, did you not think I’d be able to see through that one? Now I just wanted him to kill it to put it out of its poor, cuddly, fluffy misery. But he said we couldn’t shoot it because we can’t fire a gun within city limits. (Where’s a silencer when you need it?)
He starts frantically wandering in and out of the garage, I don’t know what he’s trying to figure out. So, I get on the phone with Laura and ask her husband to come down. She goes, “To dispose of it?”
“No, it’s still alive.”
She goes, “Okay, I’ll have him bring his pellet gun.”
About 15 minutes later, Chris shows up. (Apparently he was pacing his kitchen trying to figure out what to do, while also seething because people always call him in situations like this. In my defense, I didn’t know what else to do, and I knew he hunted before, so he might have some better ideas than we had.) He is pellet gun-less. I didn’t tell Laura (nor did I really know at the time it was important) that it was a baby bunny and not a full-grown bunny, and Chris didn’t think a pellet gun would do much harm to a full-grown bunny.
So, he and Scott stand out on the porch looking around, trying to figure out what to do. Chris also came to the conclusion that Tona just wanted to play with it. Okay, guys, I get it, the dog wasn’t being vicious, she was being playful … but that doesn’t fix the fact there’s a horribly mangled bunny on the back porch demanding your attention.
I finally call Laura to shoot the shit with her while waiting on the guys to figure out what the heck to do. Scott opens the door and pulls his hand over his eyes, in a veiling of the eyes motion, which I take to mean it’s done, and the rabbit has ceased to be. It did mean that. It also meant “close your eyes so you don’t see this as I walk this bunny carcass through our house.” He took two steps into the living room when I said, “Oh no, you did not. You are not walking that thing through my house.” He was pissed I was making him walk around the outside in the dark, rain, mud, etc. but he begrudgingly did it, mainly because I know he didn’t want to deal with my rage later.
Chris left, and in typical Chris fashion, I couldn’t tell if he was tired or pissed because of what he was forced to do just moments before. I feel bad for calling him down at 10:30 at night, but Scott was obviously having a hard time deciding what to do. And Scott was about to turn the poor mangled bunny loose in the back field, I guess to let it die a horrible death and let the feral cats feast on it. So, regardless of how he felt, I am eternally grateful his coming down resulted in a more humane death for this poor rabbit.
After it was all said and done, the curiosity did get the best of me (and Laura), as we wanted to know how they ended up offing the rabbit. Turns out they simply compressed its lungs, a trick of which I was not familiar. But it’s a lot better than some of the other ideas that were thrown out (before and after): hammer, drowning, suffocation, feral cat feast (as mentioned above), and my personal favorite – putting into a pillowcase and attaching the pillowcase to the exhaust pipe of a car. Odd, but would be effective. Chris refused to ruin a perfectly good pillow to create a makeshift silencer for his gun, and it probably wouldn’t work anyway – plus the only ammo he had were hollow-points, and for the love of all things holy, that’s not what we needed to deal with. (I don’t know why stabbing at a critical organ never came up.) At least the route they took was clean.
Of course, afterwards, you know what came next … all the bad jokes!
“Be very, very quiet … I’m hunting wabbits.”
“Wascally wabbit!”
“Man, and it’s almost Easter.”
A friend of mine, who I was texting the story to, goes, “Well, it’ll make a good stew.” Thanks, like I wasn’t ready to hurl already. Of course, that did lead into the final one of the night …
Scott told me to tell Laura that we owed them dinner for this. I laughed and said, “But not rabbit.”
AND ... because while we're talking rabbits, and someone told me about this ... here's a picture of a 57-year-old British woman who dropped $16K on plastic surgery to look like Jessica Rabbit. Quite unsuccessfully.
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