We’d only been gone a few days.
We’d been in covid hiding for months and we needed a Pacific “fix” real bad.

It was the end of October and the Monterey coast was beginning to open up to tourists.
We all thought covid was leaving and normalcy was about to return…..how silly of all of us.
Covid was just around every corner.

We kept our distance from people and instead spent our time with nature.
We filled up our senses, enough to hold us ’til next trip.

It’s always sad saying good-bye and driving away but it was time to go home.

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One of us, (not me) can’t relax from a trip until everything is put away where it belongs and there’s a back to normal feeling.

My job is unpacking our luggage and that’s what I was doing when my husband came barreling into the bedroom.
He’d been outside checking the locks on the gates.

He grabbed my hand, “hurry, you gotta see this.”

“What?”

“Just come on.”

He held my hand and pulled me through the house and out on to our back patio.

“What’s goin’ on?”

He put his finger up to his lips, “Shhhh.”

Still holding my hand, he led us tip-toeing toward the back of the yard.

“Look” he whispered.

“At WHAT?”

“Shhhh.”

He pointed. “There.”

My eyes quickly scanned the area back and forth, back and forth and then…..STOP!

Half hidden and munching on the tall green blades of grass was a teeny round beige fur-ball…..a bunny.

I gasped and startled her.
She did a high hop in the air but didn’t hop away.

She went back to grass munching.

I hurried into the house and grabbed a piece of celery and then ever so slowly, I approached her.

She didn’t appear to be frightened.

“It’s OK little bunny, we won’t hurt you.”

I offered the small piece of celery.
She pulled it from my fingers.
Her little nose began to wiggle and the celery disappeared.
She liked it.

Slowly and ever so gently, I put my hand on the top of her teeny, furry head.
My fingers sunk into the softness.
I’m not sure I’d ever felt anything quite so soft.

Her long floppy ears were half buried in the deep, wet grass.

I stayed beside her petting her teeny head.

After maybe ten minutes I decided to try the ultimate and pick her up.

She didn’t object.
She cuddled in my arms and seemed perfectly content.

I walked back to the patio holding her.
I dried the tips of her long, wet ears and we had a little chat, that bunny and me.

“Where’d you come from little bunny?

And tell me, how’d you get into our backyard and where do you live?

Somebody must be looking for you.”

She wiggled her little nose and buried her head into my arms.

Now what?

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For the next three days she hopped around our backyard, allowing me to hold her and sleeping on the patio under one of our plant pots.

It seemed she wasn’t going to hop back home, wherever that was.

She was tame, she must be someone’s pet.

We questioned our neighbors on both sides and the ones we shared our back fence with.
Nope, nobody lost a rabbit.

I called Roseville Rabbit Rescue for help but there was no help goin’ on there, they were closed down Covid tight.

We drove to the Sacramento SPCA for help or at least advice.

The very kind woman at the front desk escorted us into the Rabbit Room.

It was a room full of rabbit cages on shelves, maybe 30 or 40 and there was a rabbit in each cage.
It made me sad.

I could feel rabbit depression vibrations.

They were all huddled in a cage just a bit bigger than them, no room to move, run or play, just sit.

“We can’t take another rabbit,” she said.

“What happens to these rabbits?” I wanted to know but wished I wouldn’t have asked.

“They’re eventually put to sleep.”

At that moment, I wished I could have loaded every one of those rabbits into our car.

Nope, that’s not gonna happen to little rabbit.

We told her the story of finding little rabbit in our back yard.

She asked if we lived near a certain neighborhood park.
We did.
It was maybe 2 blocks down.
She then told us there was a report of approximately 20 bunnies dumped and abandoned in that park a week earlier.
Oh my gosh…..poor little bunny was dumped.

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The next morning I placed two ads and a picture in the lost and found of the NEXT DOOR site for our neighborhood with the caption, “HELP, found in our yard. We know nothing about rabbits.”

I checked every hour hoping someone was going to be thrilled that their bunny had been found but…..nothing.

On the second day of the posting, I received a text from a gentleman who said he had rabbits and would be happy to come talk to us about her needs.

This bunny’s “needs” were to find her way back home but what the heck?

I was a bit apprehensive about giving a stranger our address in this scary world we now live in but he had rabbits, how bad could he be?

He lived only a few miles from us.

About twenty minutes after we’d spoken, the doorbell rang.

Before he came inside, I gave him my three-second-visual-psychological-evaluation and my vibrations told me that this man with a kind face, offering to help with a lost rabbit and looking to be our peer with a beautiful, long gray hippie pony tail was OK with me.

I invited him inside.

We had a three-way introduction, Lobo, myself and Christopher.

His arms were loaded with rabbit food, rabbit hay and rabbit litter box filling.

“Um, this is very kind of you but we’re not keeping this little bunny.
She’s tame, her owners must be looking for her.”

“But in the meantime” Christopher said, “she needs food and care.”

OK, he was right.

We took him out into the back to see the little fur-ball.

He scooped her up from the green grass and fell in love.

He pulled out his phone/camera and began snapping pictures of the sweet little face.

OK I thought, if we can’t find her owners, I’ll bet this kind man named Christopher would take her and give her a good home.

The three of us rabbit talked for quite a while.

Christopher told us all about this Holland Lop Domestic Bunny who for some reason had decided to take up residence in our back yard.

He said they were of the most lovable and easy going of all rabbit breeds.

He explained about their eating habits and that they were easily litter box trained.

He guessed that this little less than three-pound bundle was probably not yet a year old.

We knew nothing about rabbits other than they’re cute, they’re soft, they hop and they bring baskets of colored eggs to kids at Easter time.
(and why do RABBITS do colored eggs anyway? Shouldn’t CHICKENS do that?)

It was the very last thing that Christopher said that changed this entire rabbit story.

He asked us to please bring her inside.

He explained that bunnies and rabbits are at the very bottom of the food chain and on this earth only to be eaten.

He was surprised that she’d made it outside as long as it seemed she had.

I was horrified!

Nothing was going to eat that little bunny.
I scooped her up into my arms and into the house we went.

Now what?

I was not putting her down to hop around.

Would she pee?
Would she poop?
Would she chew the electrical wires?
I knew nothing of bunny behavior and I wasn’t interested in finding out.

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I knew our daughter Melissa had a roll of animal fencing, I sent her a rabbit SOS and yes we could borrow it.

We gave bunny a small piece of lettuce, locked her in the bathroom and headed to Melissa’s, ten minutes away.

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That evening we layed a tarp on the living room floor and erected the fencing around it.
Yep,…..a tarp, fencing and a rabbit on the living room floor….. smack in the MIDDLE of the living room floor.

We put down a small bowl of food that Christopher had given us and one of water along with a plastic tub filled with the litter material and the soft, fluffy little bunny.

She hopped around, looked at everything, lied down and just like that, went to sleep..

Early the next morning we were at Petsmart, filling our basket with rabbit food, litter material, rabbit treats and toys.

When we returned home, I checked the lost and found site.
No one was looking for a bunny.

I removed the ad.

We were done trying to find her people.

We’d fallen in love…..with a bunny and now, WE were her people.

Us who said NO MORE PETS were captivated by this little three and a half pound bunny.
She was now ours.

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The first thing we had to do was make her a nice house and not in the middle of the living room floor.

Within 2 days my sweet man, aka Joseph the carpenter, had built a great home for a bunny.

We didn’t like that she had to hop on the tarp.
Wouldn’t carpeting feel better on her soft little bunny feet?
But of course!

Back out to rabbit shop for a carpet.

We found the perfect 5′ by 7′ carpet which was the exact size of her “apartment.”
Oh and we found a few more rabbit things.
One was a little cardboard house with open front and back doors and a window.

She quickly became a clown; hopping into her house and looking out from the window at us.

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Six weeks later little bunny had become happy with her inside life.

She rearranges her apartment funiture using her head to push things around until they’re where she wants them.
No doubt this is an interior decorator bunny.

She’s completely litter box trained and how that happened, we have no idea.
We didn’t teach her.
Maybe her first people?

She knows us and she knows we’re her family.

Each morning when she sees us, she hops and runs “quick like a bunny” in fast circles around and around in her apartment full of excitement.

We’ve never liked caging animals but for the safety of her and all the wires in this house, we couldn’t let her run free BUT…..every morning we’d shut the bedroom doors, leave the bathroom door open, block the entry into the living room and she has the freedom to hop up and down the hallway…..and she does.

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So here we are, us who never wanted another pet, in love with…..A RABBIT!
It’s three months later and things have changed.

Oh by the way, her name is Rita.
Miss Rita Rabbit, that is.

How we arrived at that name and what’s next for this little rabbit?

That’s another story.

Stay tuned.