Bunny Boy and Me

by Nancy Laracy

  “When he gets too excited, he sprays me,” I blurted out. “He won’t spray anyone else.”

  “Mooooom!” Julie shrieked. “TMI!”

  “That means too much information,” I translated, realizing I had gone too far. There was an awkward silence.

  “He sprays you with what?” came the obvious question.

  “Urine,” I whispered. If the women were shocked, they didn’t show it. But it was true. During the past year, Bunny Boy had finally sprayed me, exhibiting a male bunny’s ultimate sign of love and affection. I was now his soulmate.

  “Biscuit keeps me fighting,” said Jennifer, with a look that told me she understood my absolute love for Bunny Boy. “I wasn’t blessed with any children.”

  Then Julie got it. She jumped into the conversation. “My dad says he wants to come back in his next life as a bunny. He thinks my mom sounds like a steamy romance novel when she talks to Bunny Boy.”

  I threw my arms around her, happy to share my life with a loving daughter who tolerated my boasting about Bunny Boy.

  I was the last patient to leave the center that afternoon. My infusion had to be stopped for an hour midway, around noon, when my fever rose to 102 and my blood pressure was not within the acceptable range. When the nurse resumed the IV, the medication flowed more slowly to prevent that from happening again.

  By the time we got home, I was extremely weak and nauseous. Ward had to help me walk into the house. Bunny Boy came sprinting across the kitchen and binkied so high when he saw me that I caught him in midair, surprising myself, wondering where I had found the strength. He had an amazing way of distracting and comforting me. From the look on Ward’s and Julie’s faces, they saw it as well.

  Chapter 21

  By Thanksgiving, I was feeling better. For the past few weeks, the warmth of Bunny Boy’s furry body soothed my fever chills and eased the chest pain and nearly constant charley horses—muscle spasms—which were the side effects of my IV gamma globulin treatment. I was content—thankful for Bunny Boy’s companionship.

  I could barely contain my excitement as the mammoth-size Energizer Bunny strolled down Fifth Avenue on the TV. Bunny Boy and I snuggled happily under a blanket as we watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade together—a Buchalski childhood tradition that I tried to bring into our family. But as Julie and Chris got older, they lost interest and I was the only one who continued to watch the parade, so I was thrilled to have Bunny Boy’s company.

  I heard a commotion from the kitchen. Julie and Chris had found the turkey cake. It was my newest addition to the Thanksgiving menu. Julie’s fluorescent tennis ball cake paled in comparison. The three-dimensional turkey chocolate cake was filled with chocolate ganache, and it sported orange, yellow, brown, and white buttercream feathers. Brilliantly, I thought it could double as both the centerpiece and dessert.

  Chris had a great idea. “Bunny Boy’s birthday is in December, Mom. Why haven’t we made a bunny cake for him?” I was amazed I hadn’t thought of it myself. My brow furrowed as I imagined all the critical missed opportunities for Bunny Boy’s photo album.

  When Bunny Boy spotted Chris, he dove off my lap and headed for Chris, bobbing like a boxer. He had had enough of the parade; it was time for some serious male bonding. Bunny Boy grabbed Chris’s socks with his teeth and started thrashing his head back and forth like he was shaking a tattered doll. Then he lunged for Chris’s ankles, as if he could tackle him. Chris dropped to the floor and they wrestled playfully on the rug until Bunny Boy rolled over on his back, looking for a belly rub.

  “Mom, look! Bunny Boy’s drooling.”

  I was so engrossed in the parade I hadn’t noticed the saliva stain on my jeans. Drooling meant it was time to have Bunny Boy’s molars trimmed again, which involved light anesthesia. The chewed moldings and gnawed shoes of Bunny Boy’s earlier years now seemed desirable. Every two weeks, we drove up to Scuffy’s, and Loretta would trim Bunny Boy’s top and bottom front teeth. His molars were slower-growing and only needed to be trimmed every nine months.

  “We’ll schedule an appointment with Dr. Welch for Monday,” I said. I still couldn’t believe we had a bunny with as many health issues as I did. We were two peas in a pod.

  During Thanksgiving dinner with the extended family, a crowd of twenty, no one could decide who or what was sillier—Bunny Boy or the cake. Or me, for that matter. I was a wild card—and so was Bunny Boy. When it came time for dessert, I couldn’t bring myself to dismember the gorgeous display of turkey feathers in the middle of the table, so Bunny Boy did it for me. He popcorned from my lap, knocking over my glass and sending red wine pouring over the feathers, melting them and creating a pool of colorful mush. The cake was history.

  Chris grabbed Bunny Boy and shook his paw. “I hated that cake, pal.”

  • • •

  I had scheduled my second gamma globulin infusion for the day after Thanksgiving, thinking I would have Ward around for the long weekend to help out. But it suddenly registered in my brain that having eight hours of gamma globulin a day or two before such an important event as cutting down our Christmas trees might not have been a smart thing to do. But there wasn’t a chance I would miss out on one of my favorite family traditions.

  Every year for the last twenty years, my entire extended family would invade Black Oak Farms in Clinton, New Jersey, on Thanksgiving weekend. Rain or shine, no exceptions. Our caravan of cars would make the trip to western New Jersey to help thin out their pine tree inventory. The proprietor of the quaint farm lived on the property in an old, white shingled house with black shutters and a wraparound porch. Wild bunnies scurried through the fields. Over the years, we had seen an occasional coyote or fox, hence Bunny Boy had to skip the occasion.

  When Ward expressed concern that I planned to go along so soon after my infusion, I reminded him of an old story. One year, I had asked Ward to make the hot chocolate for the trip while I packed some snacks. Unbeknownst to me, he boiled it. When a van swerved into our lane, the thermos, which was standing between my legs on the floor in the front seat, rolled to the right and the push-down top hit my knee. Boiled chocolate milk spilled into my boot, charring my ankle. Our line of family cars changed course and sped to the first emergency room along the route. The doctor cautiously removed my boot and peeled off my sock, which was stuck to the black, burnt skin on my ankle. I had a third-degree burn, but I had survived worse. There was no way I was going home that day without my Christmas trees.

  It would be the same this year. “I guess we’re going,” Ward smiled.

  But my second infusion, taken a day before, was proving difficult. The side effects of the treatments were cumulative, specifically the muscle cramping and fatigue. I tried to keep a stiff upper lip as I forced myself to climb the mountainous terrain in my weakened state, searching for two trees. Julie and Chris favored the weeping white pines with their long, pale-green needles. I preferred the Douglas firs with their soft, deep-green needles. Ward cut down one of each.

  The following weekend, we put up the trees while snacking on a variety of appetizers and sipping hot chocolate spiked with peppermint schnapps. It was a circus, but it was our circus—strings of lights didn’t work, ornaments broke, and a tray of food was flipped by our furry friend. It was safe to say that setting up the trees was Bunny Boy’s favorite day of the year. He would grab the lights on the floor with his paws or teeth and roll over, tangled in the wires. Or he would pounce on the ornaments and drag them to the corner of the room.

  When we finished, the weeping white pine stood in front of the picture window in the lagomorph lounge, adorned with brightly colored lights, silver beaded roping, giant Christmas plaid ribbon bows I had made, and the dozens of ornaments our family had collected over the years, which included hand-painted blown glass bunnies, wooden bunnies, bunnies made of hay, and a clear glass ornament with a photo of Bunny Boy inside, flanked by pictures of Julie and Chris. Ornaments of value were placed on the higher branches while ones that
had seen better days were left at the bottom for Bunny Boy to have fun with. And he did—with ornaments to pillage, thick branches to burrow under, tinsel and pine needles that would get stuck to his paws, and a generous covering of branches to lounge under.

  Then, under duress, Ward dragged the second tree into the sunroom. He strung it with lights, but nothing more. “One tree is plenty,” he teased every year. But I disagreed and decorated the tree with the same enthusiasm as I did the first.

  The tree in the sunroom was mine and Bunny Boy’s. The shimmering lights were white and the ornaments were gold and cream. It had an elegance. Most nights, once everyone had gone to bed, Bunny Boy and I would hunker down on the sofa and just stare at the mystical, twinkling gift from nature. The hundreds of lights reflected off the glass windows that ran from the ceiling to the floor, and beams of light formed a starburst on the ceiling. I would relax and think about the many things I was grateful for. And I talked to Bunny Boy about everything. Sometimes, I complained about my health, too.

  Later that night, Bunny Boy and I made our first nightly sojourn to the sunroom to enjoy our tree. I was decked in fleece bunny pajamas and larger-than-life bunny slippers that Ward had bought me for Valentine’s Day. Suddenly, I tripped over the mammoth slippers and fell forward, sending Bunny Boy flying like a projectile across the room. He landed on the hard floor, nose first, missing the rug by only inches. He shook his head from side to side, then brought his front paws up to his mouth and scratched the area under his nose. I pried open his mouth. Two of his bottom front teeth were broken down to the gum line. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the shards of teeth on the floor.

  “Are you okay, pal?” I asked, worried he might have injured his fragile jaw. He jerked his head away, which was uncharacteristic of him, but then he hopped up onto the sofa as if he was fine.

  “I need to take one more look, Bunny Boy,” I said firmly. He crouched down low and belly crawled to the end of the couch. Then he tore under the tree and hid. I peeked under.

  “Are you okay, Bunny Boy?” I repeated.

  A papier-mâché ornament came rolling toward me, and within seconds he was zigzagging under the tree with tinsel hanging from his broken teeth. “I guess you’re fine, buddy,” I said, before I headed up to bed. “I’ll leave your teeth for the tooth fairy.”

  • • •

  The next morning, Chris found Bunny Boy hunched over and sitting in a brown puddle in the spare bedroom. He was drooling unsightly liquid. His dewlap, nose, and front paws were drenched, and his body language told me he was tense. He stunk like bad garbage and thumped loudly several times. Gently, I tried to wipe his mouth with a warm washcloth but he jerked his head backward and took off across the room. His mouth was clearly hurting him. He thumped again, loudly, and started grinding his teeth. I called Dr. Welch immediately and set up an appointment.

  The worst had happened.

  Bunny Boy had broken his jaw in the exact spot where the surgeon had shaved off a piece of the bone. According to Dr. Welch, he would probably not survive the next forty-eight hours.

  “That’s impossible,” I shrieked. “I’ll force-feed him if I have to.” I fought back tears. She had to be wrong. This couldn’t possibly be happening to our bunny.

  “Even if Bunny Boy can handle the pain, it will be nearly impossible to keep him inactive long enough for the jaw to heal,” said Dr. Welch with a sense of urgency.

  “I’ll hold him all day if that’s what it takes,” I cried out.

  “I will try to keep him comfortable,” said Dr. Welch, choking on her words, reaching for my hand. “I’m so sorry, Mrs. Laracy. I know how much you love Bunny Boy. We all do.”

  She actually thought Bunny Boy was going to die. I was terrified.

  While I never wanted Bunny Boy to suffer, I simply refused to accept the fact that he might die from a broken jaw. Bunny Boy was tough. I knew he was. Pain was no stranger to him—or me.

  “I’ll give Bunny Boy a shot for the pain and some liquid pain medication to take home with you,” said Dr. Welch, kissing the top of Bunny Boy’s head.

  “Why the brown drool?” I managed to ask.

  “Bunny Boy is eating his cecotropes and harboring them in his mouth until they’re liquified.”

  While bunnies eat some of their cecotropes to keep their digestive track healthy, Bunny Boy was eating them as his primary food source. It was, and would be, too painful to eat his pellets.

  I walked to the car clutching Bunny Boy, crying my eyes out. “You can’t give up, Bunny Boy. I won’t let you,” I sobbed.

  Bunny Boy looked up at me, listless and glazed. I sat in the front seat of the car and yelled out desperately. “There’s no way I’ll let you die from a broken jaw, buddy. You can beat this. I know you can.”

  I felt so helpless, so frightened. And I was rattled. How would I tell my family? I started praying with fervor until I could pull myself together enough to drive.

  I pulled out of the parking lot with Bunny Boy resting on my lap, drooling onto my sweatpants. I must have still been partially dazed when I cut off a teenager in his souped-up jeep. He slammed on his horn, startling us. Bunny Boy plunged down onto my right foot and my car veered forward. My chest hit the steering wheel and I yanked the wheel toward the shoulder of the road while trying to lift my foot off the gas pedal, but Bunny Boy felt like an anvil. I managed to hit the brake with my left foot and threw the car into park. And then I screamed out of sheer frustration. My nerves had finally had enough.

  “You nearly got us both killed, Bunny Boy,” I shrieked amid my crying, as I lifted Bunny Boy off my foot. “Did you hear me buddy? What if I hadn’t been able to control the car?” He stared at me with a glassy look, still in the land of psychedelic lights from his pain shot. Suddenly, he darted across the seat and looked around sharply, as if a danger was within striking distance, and started scratching wildly at the window. Then I saw the cop. I rolled down the window.

  “He was sitting on my lap, officer, when a car horn scared him and he hopped onto the gas pedal. I think we’re both fine.” I was anything but fine. Bunny Boy was clawing madly at the front seat.

  “We were just going home,” I continued, reaching for a Kleenex to wipe away my tears. “It’s been a rough time at the veterinarian.”

  The officer glanced at my drugged, psychotic bunny and kindly offered to follow me home, turning off his lights.

  On the drive home, I decided I couldn’t bear to tell my family about Bunny Boy’s dismal prognosis. Instead, I focused on a plan for Bunny Boy’s complete recovery. It was as simple as that.

  “Bunny Boy has a broken jaw, but he is going to be fine,” I told everyone as I kissed Ward’s head gently, trying not to cry.

  I gave Bunny Boy his pain medicine and fed him his critical care food around the clock like it was business as usual. He took them both compliantly. I rocked him for hours on end and slept with him on the bed in the spare room. I begged him not to give up. The tears dripped onto my T-shirt like icicles melting in the sun. I was frightened and completely heartbroken. It was gut-wrenching to watch Bunny Boy thump and grind his teeth, but my only consolation those first few days was when he would nudge me sweetly with the side of his face. I could still see some life in his eyes.

  All plans for the holiday party we had offered to host for Ward’s work had been put on hold. Each night, I said the rosary and begged God to help Bunny Boy recover. I couldn’t imagine life without him. Ward told Julie and Chris the gravity of the situation, skipping the part that he could die. I asked the children to intensify their prayers and told them not to give me any presents for Christmas. Bunny Boy would be my gift if he lived, god willing.

  By the fourth day after his accident, Bunny Boy had miraculously stopped grinding his teeth and thumping. He was still lethargic and showed no signs of wanting to be held by anyone except me. The kids and Ward took turns hanging out on the floor curled up next to him, stroking and talking to him. My family’s love for B
unny Boy seemed to have deepened even further.

  After a week of almost twenty-four-hour care, Bunny Boy was bobbing his head with a gentle enthusiasm for the apple banana goop. A brilliance returned to his eyes and his body seemed relaxed. Beneath my outer calm and positive facade, I still feared that his jaw might never heal properly. But that didn’t matter for now. Bunny Boy had survived over two hundred and fifty hours, disregarding professional opinion. Dr. Welch was simply amazed.

  “Bunny Boy has broken all rules when it comes to rabbits,” she said. “He has the heart of a lion, not the prey animal he is. He is incredibly strong and tolerant of both pain and stress. As I’ve always said, the love and devotion from you and your family has made his heart stronger.”

  With each passing day, Bunny Boy regained his strength and lightheartedness. Our household slowly returned to some sense of normalcy, whatever normal was. By mid-December, I finally felt comfortable enough to leave Bunny Boy for more than an hour with Julie and Chris so I could attend a Christmas party with Ward. I called the caterer the next morning. Our holiday party was back on.

  Chapter 22

  By the time my birthday arrived on December 19, I had cut Bunny Boy’s syringe feedings from four to twice a day. He was already eating the timothy hay pellets I had softened with warm water. He had also stopped drooling. His beautiful long ears, which had lain flat on his head for so long, returned to their “happy” position, and his nose resumed its twittering. According to Dr. Welch, Bunny Boy’s recovery was a miracle and a testament to his incredible will to live.

  But in true Laracy flip-flop style, my birthday turned into the night from hell. As we were about to turn in for the night, Chris ran into our bedroom clutching Sunny, showing us her stomach. There was a lump in our lizard’s abdomen. Sunny looked like she was nine months pregnant.

  “It wasn’t there this morning,” he shrieked. “We need to take her to the vet now!”

  Speechless, I deferred to Ward. When he suggested we wait until morning, Chris practically convulsed and started crying. Ward mouthed quietly to me, “What’s with our pets and lumps?”