Scotty's Bunny Part 2: The Bunlet

As illustration, here is a picture of a baby bunny I stole from another blog.

Scotty caught another bunny, but this time it wasn't much of a challenge, since this one wasn't even ripe yet. Maybe the size of a fuzzy tangerine with a head. I stopped mowing in the front yard when I noticed Scotty on the other side of the backyard chain-link fence with that intense concentration face on; he was focusing on something in his paws.

I pushed him back and found the tiny baby bunny, too scared to move. I picked her up and wiped away some of the dog spit. Scotty sat at my feet as if he expected me to pop the morsel into his mouth as a treat.

I turned off my iPod - a Studio 360 discussion about The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - just irrelevant noise compared to this tiny bit of pure beauty, terrified but quiet in my hand.

I wanted to go in and get my camera. I wanted to take it into the house and make it a pet. But enacting either of those dumb ideas would have met with extreme disapproval by the bun and would not have heightened or lengthened this minute of bliss. And isn't that what we crave? We try to catch it, own it, but it's not the same as the thrill of riding through a new, unexpected moment of it.

Her little heart beat in my hand. Her little eyes looked up at me without a shred of trust. But she knew she was out of options, so she waited for her fate. Her fur was so soft.

I put her down on the non-dog side of the fence. It took her a moment to realize that her presence was no longer required, so I gave her tiny little booty a nudge and away she went.

It takes a while for a new house to acquire enough of those little moments that meld in your memory so that when you think of your house, you think of those moments. Two and a half years into living in this house, I still feel that this building is still far from earning an acceptable stack of those place-rooted memories.

But this was one of those moments.

Scotty is still pacing and whining in the house, wishing for another chance at it. So I'm guessing that we did not get the same thing out of the experience.