The Sound a Bunny Makes

When you ask most children what sound a bunny makes they will usually just twitch their nose.  That's a perfectly respectable answer, but not entirely correct.  Rabbits do actually make a sound.  It's a sound that does not at all match the fuzzy reputation of bunnies and if you heard it, you wouldn't believe it had come from a bunny at all.  Maybe bunnies don't usually make a sound because all of the other animals would make fun of them, but this cry is saved for moments of extreme duress.  I know that they only make a sound while under duress because of one reason, my friend Mike.

When I was a kid we had a seemingly unending stream of pet bunnies that came, I assume, from the previous owner of our first pair of rabbits assuring my father he had two male bunnies.  We used to walk our bunnies up and down the street on little green leashes before they became raging alcoholics who would barely even move to eat.  That's another story entirely. 

Anyhow, on one of our little walks our bunny, Thumper, got tired and decided to rest at our neighbor's house.  It seemed as good a time as any to visit our friends, so we tied Thumper's leash to the porch railing and went inside for a visit.  My friend, Mike, was a charmingly curious little boy who would often wander off and have little adventures of his own.  It was during one such adventure that we began to wonder where he had gone off too when we suddenly heard the oddest noise coming from the porch.  It sounded like a small pony or a donkey braying and we couldn't imagine what kind of creature it was coming from.

When we got to the porch, there stood Mike holding in his hand the little green leash with a very nervous bunny at the end.  He looked up at us with his big, brown eyes and quietly said, "He sat on a thorn."   Worst.... liar.... ever.  It was clear that the little boy decided the bunny was lonely and would have more fun in the house with the rest of us, so he grabbed him by the leash and attempted to lead him up the porch steps like you would a dog.  Except, bunnies don't really move like dogs.  Thumper, believing that he was going to die by being hanged from his own ridiculous leash (I mean, come on, who puts a rabbit on a leash?) gave out one last cry of desperation.  It's that cry that stopped the little boy in his tracks and attracted a house full of spectators to the scene, saving the bunny's fluffy little tail.

I hadn't thought about that day in quite a while, but was reminded of it when I heard that vaguely familiar sound very early this morning just before sunrise.  "Another bunny in duress," I thought.  Later that morning I went to my backyard and found a fluffy bunny tail.  No bunny.  Just the tail.


UPDATE:  We found a second bunny tail in the back yard.  Apparently, our yard is a fantastic hunting ground for a very skilled night creature!