Growing up, my siblings and I were like any other kids. We wanted pets to care for. My older sister, Becky, had a pet rat named Snowball when she was in 5th grade. My brother and I caught a salamander in our basement one day and stuck the poor thing in a glass terrarium. I don’t remember what happened to either of those creatures, but I’m sure their endings were not pretty.
When we lived out in the country after moving to Wisconsin, we had half a dozen cats running around our property. They were not indoor pets, however, and were able to survive without much attention from us. We had two Norwegian Elkhounds, outside dogs as well. Princess was hit by a car and Milla was such a miscreant that we ended up returning her to the farmer that had given her to us.
I worked on a farm from the time I was in 6th grade until I finished college. I spent a lot of time around animals – chickens, pigs and cows mostly. I had a healthy respect for all of them and got to know many of them on a personal level, like milk cow #53. She was an ornery old cuss. Didn’t matter what I did at milking time. If I tried to move her over, she kicked me. When I tried to put the milker on her, she kicked me. When I took the milker off, she kicked me. Okay, I’ll admit it; I kicked her back a few times. Hurt my foot more than it hurt her.
When it came time for an animal to depart this world due to old age or injury, the farmers I knew didn’t waste a lot of time or emotion. They would purposefully remove the animal from the farm, and, in time, get another one.
Then came the kids. My wife and I took a firm stance against pets of any kind. But you know how kids can be, right? Does the word relentless come to mind?
“Dad, why can’t we have a pet?” they’d chirp in unison.
“Because you wouldn’t take care of it.”
“Yes we would! We promise!”
“No. You wouldn’t.”
After months of infighting, they wore us down. We gave an inch; they took half a mile. Our next door neighbors at the time had a couple of pet rabbits. They weren’t your textbook white Easter bunnies with pink eyes. They were mangy looking things with buck teeth. The two little girls next door told our kids they could have one of their rabbits. Their dad threw in a free hutch so it could stay in the garage. Against our better judgment, we took ownership of a grubby looking varmint and the kids named her Francis.
Like most animals that were meant to live outside, Francis did not acclimate well to indoor habitation. Even though we kept her in a cage in the garage, the kids wanted to bring her into the house so they could play with her, and I use the term play loosely. The first time I picked her up, she bit me. In fact, every time I picked her up, she bit me. “Oh, so this is how it’s going to be?” I said to her.
Once placed on the floor, Francis would immediately seek refuge behind the sofa or under the hutch or one of the chairs in the family room. I don’t know if rabbits are nervous by nature, but Francis had this habit of chewing on things that were not meant for chewing: fingers, furniture legs, and worst of all, lamp cords! I had to fix two lamps that summer after she chewed right through the cords. Our relationship was not a healthy one.
In the fall of that year, my wife had earned an incentive trip from her company. We were to spend a week in Rome, Italy, with the other top sales people. The principal at my school had allowed me to take a week off as long as I paid for my substitute teacher. I wanted to make it easy on my sub, so a couple weeks before we left, I started typing up detailed lesson plans for each of my 7th-grade classes. I spent hours each night in front of an old Gateway computer banging out page after page. The word processor did not have an autosave feature, and, being in a hurry, I had neglected to back up most of the work I’d completed.
Two nights before we were supposed to leave, I was out in the family room working at a small table by the sofa. One of the kids had let Francis in the house earlier that day and she had disappeared. All of a sudden, without warning, my computer screen went blank. Completely dark. I tried the power button. Nothing. Everything I had finished was gone. I was devastated. I looked behind the sofa and saw that it was still plugged in. Then I saw Francis a couple feet away gnawing on the cord that had been connected to the plug!
“NOOOOOOOO!” I yelled at the top of my lungs. “You’ve got to be kidding me! All my work is gone! I’m gonna kill you, you stupid rabbit!” My wife and kids came running in from the kitchen to see what was wrong. One of the kids picked up the guilty party and put her out in the garage. That was the last straw. I told the kids what had happened and that Francis was going back to the neighbors. Surprisingly, they didn’t put up much of a fight. I think they had grown tired of her shenanigans.
We returned the cage and the creature and I cleaned up the mess she had left in the garage. That was the end of it. It would be several years before the kids wore us down again. Same empty promises; somewhat different results!
P.s. My sub that year had to make do with a less-than-detailed set of lesson plans. She survived.
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