Rabbits

Abby wants a rabbit. She keeps telling us that her friend Sheng Yi is going to give her one soon. She knows that we aren’t too keen on a pet at this point and we know that she’s determined to get one. Neither of Jenny or I want to be directly confrontational so we keep throwing up roadblocks in an attempt to discourage her. She calmly takes our comments under advisement and counters after a while. It’s this sort of understated battle of wits. Imagine the following extended over a 2-3 day period.

Abby: Sheng Yi said she will bring a me a rabbit on Friday.

Parents: Isn’t that what she said last Friday?

Abby: Yes. (No further comment, previous failures to deliver apparently being irrelevant)

Parents: How can we get a rabbit when we’ll be out of town for a few weeks in the summer? Who will feed him?

Abby: Our friends.

Parents: They’ll be away too.

Abby: We can let him eat 2 weeks worth of food the day before we leave.

Parents: That won’t fit in his stomach.

Abby: We can put a pile of food in the backyard and he can eat at his leisure.

Parents: What about water?

Abby: We can fill up the little plastic pool.

Parents: He can’t climb up to drink it.

Abby: We can lean a board up to the edge.

Etc…

Jenny finally had to intervene and have the kindergarten teacher ask Sheng Yi if she was really going to give Abby a rabbit, to which she calmly said “no”.

In any case, I’ve got a hunch we’ll be getting a rabbit sometime soon anyway. We had a few when we were young and they were a lot less demanding than dogs or cats. We just let them run around in the backyard. They basically mowed down all the vegetation less than a foot high, but my sister and I thought they were great.