Only kindly Thumpers need apply

We packed up Lucy and took her back to the vet.

It’s better this way.

Lucy is a rabbit with spots like a snow leopard.  Her ears are stark black, twitching like fat antenna.

Cindy had brought her home, basically to try her out.  It seems our vet is the repository for abandoned pets found by one of the local police departments.  So it often has unwanted animals needing homes. We agreed to be foster parents to Lucy for a week.  Apparently we were the third family to give it a go.

Those who know us know we like pets.  And we have experience with rabbits – we’ve owned three:

• Freckles, who lived outside in a pen when the kids were little.  I rigged a wire run the depth of the yard so I could put a leash on Freckles; he would run up and down the yard at will.
  
• Smokey, who followed Freckles and also lived outside, using the same run.
  
• And Saucepan, a dwarf rabbit that we inherited after Meghan convinced her college roommates to invest in a rabbit.  The girls’ appetite for caring for Saucepan evaporated by the second month, so Saucepan found his way to our house.

So the vet’s office thought we were a good match.

(Meghan remains a rabbit fan, now that she’s out on her own. She owns two – Oliver and Bella.  They pretty much go with her everywhere, including when she’s home visiting.)

By all measures, Lucy seemed the ideal pet.  She’d been housebroken, that was clear. 

We could leave her cage open on the main floor, and she’d freely roam from living room to kitchen to TV room.  Much to our dogs’ disappointment, she’d leave no trace behind.

She did have one bad moment – she bit into the wire of our Wii set.  But the wire is very thin, I rationalized, so obviously very appetizing.  Lucy did not touch our more substantial wires.

Very quickly, we took a liking to her.  She and the dogs got along great; she seemed ever curious and playful.  And, as I said, housebroken. 

Oh … there was one small problem.  Once out of her cage, it took an effort to get her back in.  With Saucepan, I could say “cage” and she’d hop in.  With Lucy … well, we tried that.  But she refused to climb in.  Even food wouldn’t coax her. 

But she was, again, housebroken, so no big deal.  We’d leave her loose in the fireplace room at night with her cage open, and also when we went to work.

But by the fourth day, it started to get weird.  The first sign was when Cindy got home from work … and found the chair by the window, de-stuffed.  Lucy had managed to chew into the back of it and drag out mounds of white fluff.

Okay, not good.  But we stuffed it back in, did some sewing.  No harm done. 

But we decided we could no longer trust Lucy to roam freely without us around.  Which really wasn’t that big a deal in theory; such was the case with Saucepan.

But, we would have to corral her before leaving the house, or heading to bed.

Easier said ...

Even with two of us in pursuit, Lucy would dodge and twist and slip and slide, hiding under furniture, behind plants, or she’d outright move more quickly than we ever could.  You’ve heard of “herding cats.”  This was a rabbit roundup – though a bit embarrassing for us, given it was just one rabbit.

On the fifth day, Cindy reached her limit.  (Cindy was home; I was at work.)  She needed the rabbit in the cage – now!  She had errands to run.  She managed to grab Lucy, but Lucy must have decided by now that our feelings had turned. 

She bit Cindy.  

Not smart.

Cindy lost her grip on Lucy ... while also losing the 35% of remaining affection she had for the critter. She grabbed our large red tablecloth.  (I had suggested earlier that if worse came to worst, a blanket would to the trick … like a net. Throw it over the rabbit, gather her in, and deposit her in the cage.)

Cindy slowly walked toward the rabbit … with tablecloth spread … like a matador to a bull.

Lucy sat still, nose twitching, her eyes tracking the tablecloth as it neared, inch by inch.

And then Lucy did something that we’d never seen in our 25 years of rabbit ownership.

Lucy grunted – indeed, like a mad bull -- and charged at Cindy.  Not a simple two-step in Cindy’s  direction.  No, this was pure aggression – those black ears were now upright like horns. And not just once.  She’d charge, then back up under the coffee table, then charge again.  Her grunt had turned into a growl, growing louder with each thrust.

You could imagine small, rabbit snorts coming from her nostrils.  You swore her pitch-black eyes had now turned red. 

Indeed, our idyllic, housebroken friend was, in fact, The Devil Rabbit.

El Diablo Conejo!!

Now Cindy was growling as well.

"I don't have time for this [bleep], you stupid-[bleep] rabbit!" she yelled. 

Lucy charged yet again.  But this time, Cindy was ready.  She hurled the tablecloth, and it fell over Lucy like a poacher's net.  

Caught!

Cindy quickly gathered the squirming mound up, walked it to the cage, and deposited its holdings.  She slammed the cage shut.  If there had been a key, she would have hurled it to Omaha.

Of course, we’ve all heard stories of mad rabbits. Let’s start with Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter. (“I’m late, I’m late … for a very important date!”) 

My favorite, though, is from April 20, 1979, when a swimming swamp rabbit attacked President Jimmy Carter while he was fishing in Georgia.

And animal apologists will read this and argue that Lucy must have been abused at some point before she arrived.  Or that our own techniques at accommodation were, er, sub-human.  How else to explain why a rabbit – so docile, so mild mannered -- could abruptly turn into a terror?

But the basic fact is that we Weavers don’t ask much of our pets beyond comity and shared affection.

Lucy, after given considerable freedom, not to mention lots of food, failed both tests.

So Lucy is gone, back to the vet.  (The vet’s assistant, by the way, told us upon Lucy’s return: “Oh, she charged at you, too?”)

I’m hoping she finds a home.  Perhaps one more tolerable … where the owner can dress like a living-room matador, and Lucy can charge and grunt and growl.

Where the two can have their devilish fun, and pass the day away.

Tunnel vision: Risk and return

Foot-thick cement walls, about 6 inches above ground, framed the cave-like entrance. In the dead of summer,  scratchy weeds would hide the opening. Few knew about its secrets … just us neighborhood kids.  It was within sight of my front yard in Webster Groves, an older St. Louis suburb.  

We called it the “tunnel.”   It was located in the “field” at the bottom of the steep hill below “the tracks.”  

Mom used to caution me as I went out the door:  “If you go to the field, stay out of the tunnel.  And off the tracks!” 

“Sure, Mom,” I cheerily yelled.  Then I and friends Mikey and Bill would cross the street to the field and proceed to defy death – by clambering through the tunnel’s depths or dodging trains on the Missouri Pacific train tracks above. (You can see the field today if you call up Google Maps and put in: “Glen Road and Hawthorne Avenue, Webster Groves, Mo.” It’s to the west.) 

As I watched fireworks last night, I thought about taking risks.  And how as you get older, you avoid them. When young, we used to throw firecrackers and shoot bottle rockets at each other. We’d dance or duck, depending on what was coming our way.  

Last night, we dodged sparks from sparklers and thought that daring. 

What’s the riskiest thing you’ve ever done? 

I asked myself that this morning. 

There was the time roommate Tom and I, just out of college, rafted down a mountain river not far from Lynchburg, Tennessee, home of the Jack Daniels distillery.  (We  had stopped at J.D.’s along the way, saw the bourbon but couldn’t partake because Moore County, where the distillery resides, is dry. But we smelled it!)  

"The river is too high," we’d been told by phone.  Plus it was off-season. But Tom was not dissuaded.  We arrived at the guide’s store, and he agreed to take us … but he warned, more than a few times, that it’d be dangerous. 

It was treacherous – angry rapids; looming rocks; ice-cold, heavy waves knocking us senseless. When it was over, it took three beers and a drive to Nashville before we calmed down.  

Then there was the time I flipped a total of three times while single-man rafting down the Green River in Utah. Or when I went rock climbing on Missouri river bluffs with no ropes or knowledge of techniques … just slippery Keds to grab a toehold. 

Or probably the riskiest … when, in high school, friends Bruce, Holly and I explored a very small, largely uncharted cave in Southern Illinois after a heavy rain – a cave so small and wet that you had to sink neck-deep into water to squeeze into the next chamber. 

Who knew whether that underground waterway was rising or falling that day? 

Yep, there’s often a fine line between taking a risk and being dumb.

But the buzz, the exhilaration you feel each time you live such an experience is priceless. 

Now that I consider the question, I think I remember most fondly the “tunnel” and the “tracks.” Because I think then – when I was 8 or 9 – that the risk-taking was most natural.  You didn’t think about danger much, and when you did, only as some distant recollection that Mom may have warned you once about something … maybe. 

I won’t share our activities on the railroad tracks.  That was dumb. 

But the tunnel … ahh, that was adventure, pure and simple.  The tunnel opening was flat with the land, measuring about 4 x 6 feet. You’d climb down by jumping first to a large, clay pipe that jutted in from the north; from there, you’d leap to the bottom.  I’d guess now it was altogether maybe 5 feet deep; to us, we were knocking on China’s door. 

It was always cool in the tunnel – in the hottest of summer days, always cool and damp. 

The horizontal opening yielded to a vertical cave-like entrance, wide and tall … rounded at the top like a miniature railroad tunnel.  It was brick-lined.  We could walk upright for about 20 feet. We would secretly bring flashlights – or, when we were most daring, candles and matches – to see. 

This was not a sewer tunnel.  It smelled fresh … or at least as fresh as a brick tunnel could smell. It was designed for storm-water runoff, so there was no apparent danger of sewer gas, though that was a distinction that occurred to me many years later. 

The first 20 feet were, of course, the easiest.  After that, the tunnel narrowed considerably – to a storm-water pipe of about 3 foot in diameter.  There, we’d lower ourselves to hands and knees. 

As we crawled, we also knew we were navigating under the huge hill supporting the tracks above. If we were lucky, a train would rumble over, and the ground would shake around us.  Most times, though, it was quiet except for the bouncing noise of our own movements. 

Although my memory is fuzzy now, I’d say the pipe stretched for another 50 feet or so.  But the pipe didn’t emerge into daylight.  It opened into a small chamber, at the top of which was a manhole cover -- likely a portal to the street on the hill’s other side. 

And at the bottom of the chamber there was more tunnel, though now an even smaller pipe. 

We had made the trip to this chamber many times.  We’d use candle smoke to leave our initials, or share a knife to scratch a message. Sometimes we’d compliment each other on our bravery, though that got old after awhile. 

Rarely if at all, though, would we venture on, either above or further west.  Because now it became truly scary. 

Above, you risked popping up in the middle of a street whose traffic was not known.  We never tried this. 

To the west? The pipe was tight -- 2 feet wide – but navigable. The few times we went, we’d squeeze in, one at a time … your head right behind his feet. Like a mole, you’d have to lie flat and inch yourself along with your hands while pushing with the sides of your shoes. 

Oh, and usually no flashlights.  It was hard to budge when you were one-handed.  But that was okay; the pipe was so tight you could barely lift your head to see.  So all was black. 

And, of course, there was no turning around; to get out, you had to put yourself into reverse. 

I’d say the furthest we got was maybe another 20 feet.  It was always the same: Whoever would be leading would chicken out first. He’d tell the others he wanted to start backing up – now! -- and his panicky voice would get higher and thinner and louder the slower the rest of us responded. 

In the end, it’d be a mad mix of screams, shouts and grunts, all echoing loudly in the pipe, as we scrambled backwards. We’d all squirt out into the small chamber, huffing hard.  If we were lucky, nobody’s teeth would be lost to flailing shoes.  And we’d laugh – a laugh of relief, sure, but also a celebration. We dodged death again. 

In quieter times, we’d guess where the tunnel eventually ended up.  We all swore we could hear distant traffic noises when each of us had led the parade, and that caused more speculation.  

I always hoped it opened onto the then-new McDonalds on Manchester Road – I’m sure I smelled fries the time I led – but I later realized the tunnel would’ve required a couple of sharp rights and a distance of 5 miles -- at least -- to reach the Golden Arches. 

Six years ago, I took our dogs to the field to check it out.  Dad had passed on; Mom soon would be moving to assistant-care-living near us in Kansas City. 

I found the tunnel closed … filled in.  The Missouri Pacific Railroad at some point must have realized -- guided I’m sure by its liability attorneys -- that the tunnel opening posed a danger.  So it is now sealed shut. 

The parent in me says, “Okay, I get it.”  But the little spark of the child in me says, “Oh … too bad.”  

It’s not a coincidence that we risk the most when we are younger. But why is that? 

This is the 10^th month I’ve been writing this blog, which started with a promise to myself and encouragement to others to embrace occasional risks.  I’ve taken some since, but I think not enough. 

You see, the tunnel continues to call.  

It’s a good thing.