Hide and seek

It feels like I accidentally stepped into the wrong train, where I was having a very bumpy ride, barely hearing the announcement  “Welcome to Rockbottom” before I stumbled out and fell flat on my face. Last  few months events had made me own up to some hard truths about myself. It all started with the bachelor-project I was assigned to. I am in it with two other students and neither of us all would have chosen this topic if we would have had a choice. Unlike them my motto is think big and aim high and I dived deep into the subject. But after many endless meetings with a supervisor who is not great in answering her e-mail I am trudging towards the deadline for the paper without any hopes left of a high mark. A project like this, next to upcoming exams does not leave much room to live. However, I forced myself to stay put until the end of June I didn’t expect life was planning a couple of other lessons to be taught. The first lesson came from the Minister of finance. With a tax bill twice as high as my advisor had predicted he taught me I should better find myself some more clients, instead of focusing on a subject like language processing, which is very far from my own field of interest.  Second, I should not rely on advice. No, that last bit is not true. Only I should check an advice, before relying to it. That is exactly how I dealt with a bit more of a personal problem, my mom’s health. Last month she has been hospitalized twice and I am fully entitled to feel confused when even a doctor needs to ask advice from his colleagues. Even though she is getting better now there are still some unexplained troublesome matters going on which I simply cannot ignore. Yes, I could ignore them as long as I was buried in study-matters but not at the times I received her message being in the hospital again of course. Luckily my aunt stepped in and accompanied my mom to her doctor’s appointment.

After feeling cranky for four weeks now I am ready to admit that I have a tendency to shovel too much on my shoulders. Although, I am still not fully aware of what I put on my sore shoulders, before things collapse. A little more than a week ago I learnt that the father of my kids was having his backyard done. He was ready to get rid of the two rabbits living there in their big kennels. One of the workmen knew someone who might want to take them. It felt wrong to me. The oldest, a ten year old small rabbit was a remaining of the time we were all a happy family and the biggest, a five year old ‘kill-and-attack-rabbit’ was my mistake. Before that rabbit turned out to be grumpy, growling and mean, it was a sweet little baby rabbit. However, as soon as we did not dare to put our hands in the cage to feed it anymore, I could dump it in his backyard. He had another kennel so the second rabbit I had bought a year after the mean one was moving from inside the house to the kennel in my backyard. This rabbit was the sweetest, cutest rabbit we ever had and I fenced the terrace so it could have more space.

It acted more like a little doggy than being rabbit like. Every time we opened the backdoor he jumped out of his open plan kennel to greet us. He was very happy to be cuddled and every time I left the backyard to go somewhere by bike, he used to sit behind the fence, watching me go, like a doggy, really. Everybody loved this drop-eared fluffy cutie. I think it was partly because all the space he had that he was so happy and friendly. That same space made me say to give the other rabbits to me instead to some stranger who might want to eat them.

It was a heavy job moving the other kennels to my backyard but all I had to do about it, thanks to my sore shoulder, was driving the van I borrowed and giving directions of where to put it. All of a sudden the space of the terrace was not so big anymore. Our own rabbit was curious with all what was going on but his first encounter through the fences was greeted very unfriendly by the new habitants. We decided it was best to let them out one at a time to prevent nasty rabbit fights. After a couple of days they seemed to get along a little more since cutie could enter the fence of the others without being torn apart. It was funny that cutie had found a whole in the fence of the other’s outer part. Although, separated by another fencing he was visiting the big one really close. I thought it would only take a little more time before they would become real friends with each other. Until big one found another whole, and stuck its head through it, growling like a mad rabbit to the cute one. I put a piece of hardboard between it, so they could not touch each other.

Thursday night when I was cleaning the kennel of big one I thought the cute one was a little lazy, curled up in the neighboring rabbit-run. He responded when I approached him with my hand but only to turn around and restart snoozing. He did not touch his fresh food and I wondered if he had been falling in love or something. We put him in his own kennel for the night where he ate a little and remained a little awkward. The next morning I found him at the same spot where we left him and when I called him he came to me real slow and seemed to lump a little. I called the vet and the receptionist told me we could come to see the vet at 11:15 a.m. It was only 10:00 a.m. and I asked if it could be sooner because I was really worried that it might be too late. She agreed on bringing him in now and then the vet would take a look at him between other appointments. We brought him and as soon as we were home my cellphone rang. It was the vet. She examined the rabbit and suspected a bad infection of e-coli. This is an one-cell organism which lives latent in the intestines of men and animal only to be activated in times of stress. She thought he would have little chance of surviving and advised to put him to sleep. I almost begged her to do not that and do whatever she could before jumping back in the car to get there. She said she would make preparations for an infusion already but also that the other rabbits might be in danger. We emptied two card-boxes and put the other rabbits in it. Just before we were ready to go there my phone rang again. It was the vet. She said she was very sorry but the rabbit died.

We went there anyhow, to have the other rabbits examined and to collect the dead body of the cute one to bury in the backyard but it was very hard to stop the tears. Now we have to nurse the other two rabbits. They need to have a daily dose of medicine for at least 28 days, to prevent them from having the same disease and the smallest also needs ointment in both his eyes, twice a day. I wonder if  life is teaching me to change some behavior while I hear constantly the first lines of “Little talk” from Of Monsters and Men.