Back in April of 2010—what seems a lifetime ago—I was sitting peacefully at my desk working on the computer, when my boss, in the office behind me, let out a yell. She had been meeting with Nathan, our consultant, and dragged him outside to my desk. She exclaimed breathlessly, “Nathan’s rabbits just had babies and he’s looking for homes for them!” I told them firmly, “NO, I can’t get another rabbit, because my husband was heartbroken when the rabbit we had died five years ago. He said he never wanted another one because he didn’t want to go through that again!”

Sure enough, when I talked to my husband that night, he said adamantly, NO, no more rabbits! But Nathan persisted and over the next few weeks, began e-mailing me photos of his baby rabbits, who at first looked like only balls of fur, but grew increasingly cuter once their eyes opened and their ears took shape. Now, how can you resist a face like THIS!

I decided that I HAD to have TWO of them so that they would have companionship. One night, as we were going to sleep, I told my husband sadly that, I REALLY REALLY needed to have TWO rabbits. Knowing that he would never get any sleep otherwise and resigned to his fate, he said OK very reluctantly.

When they were about 6 weeks old, we went to pick them up. Flopsie, the brown one, looked like a fuzzy stuffed animal, and Mopsie had shiny sleek black fur like a panther, except for his one white front paw.

When we first brought them home, they were tiny, so we kept them in a wire cage on the lanai. As they grew larger, we decided to build a playpen out on the grass in the back yard so that they could exercise. We constructed an oval pen with thick plastic netting two-and-a-half feet high, staked down into the ground, naively thinking this would contain them. Now when I look back on it, I have to laugh.  (to be continued)