We were supposed to be at the CVS buying shampoo. I was visiting Seth in Austin, and the exotic pet store had iguanas and sugar gliders, but I only had eyes for him. His long lopsided ears reminded me of an old TV antenna and when I picked him up I could smell warm earth.

The shop guy said he had been there for five years, that Angoras are designer pets, but his broken floppy ear had made him a hard sell. I knew instantly I wasn’t going home with shampoo, but with a really big, white, fluffy rabbit.

I recognize that I give, like, West Coast post-hippie chiller, but my Virgo rising never lets me do impulsive shit like this and I just couldn’t leave him alone again in that glass box. I told triple Aquarius Seth we were leaving the store as three when the ragdoll in my arms pushed his chest against mine, laying his head on the curve of my neck.

Later that night we took psychedelics and fell in love with the fantasy of him, deciding his name was clearly Handsome as he slept for hours in our arms and on our laps like a rescue dog finally home, for the first time. He carried an air of both camp and wisdom, like the ethereal Falkor from The NeverEnding Story. He also took thousands of shits all over Seth’s apartment, which was kind of astounding. We agreed he needed discipline, and a friend.

PB was on Kijiji for free. A family with three young boys had bought him a few months earlier, but he was already getting neglected in their basement. Small and round he looked like a tea cozy for the world’s littlest pot. When we brought him home he seemed terribly afraid and did not want to be touched. The kids, who were calling him Boba, had no doubt been manhandling him.

He hid under our couch for days, our little Pretty Boy. We let him be, quietly delivering hay, romaine lettuce and water, respecting his need for space and time to return from fight or flight. On day ten I randomly tweaked my back and couldn’t move so Seth dragged the bed into the living room where the light was nice and in my forced stillness, PB came out from under the couch and sat right next to me. I reached out to pet his silky peanut head, and when I made to stop, he nudged his face into the palm of my hand. Of course, I cried.

Hay and shit everywhere, it began as chaos. We did not know what we were doing and the two boys, much to our dismay, violently hated each other. On top of that I had to go back to Canada, so Seth got saddled managing the shit factory bunny fight club. Even in those early feral months he never really caged them, we couldn’t imagine doing that, and in time they were litter trained and bonding, licking each other’s faces under lawn chairs on the beach.

“Is that a fuckin’ rabbit?!” The border patrol officer, perhaps unexpectedly reminded of his own humanity, happily waved Seth, who had driven from Texas to Ontario with our two sons, across the invisible line after seeing Handsome hop into the passenger seat. It was a summer day and we were about to try living all together in my Parkdale attic bachelor apartment with the one window.

The four of us quickly settled into a routine. Every day Seth and I would sweep the hay that stuck to their feet and trailed across the rug, and every night the boys, like inseparable brothers now, got a salad, nice veggies, and fruit. Whenever I took a bath they’d nap at the base of the toilet, and I started to understand what they needed to feel happy and safe beyond their basic needs. I came to know how to handle them, how to connect with them individually through an honest exchange of energy, intuition and trust.

PB, who to me is actually like the inside of a tulip, the most precious thing, has major little brother energy, and likes to be endlessly petted, but panics if you try and pick him up. Food obsessed Handsome might be a little blind and doesn’t seem to see you until you're right up close, so I talk to him while I’m nearing, nice and easy.

Rabbits are instinctually prey animals, wired to hide in corners and under brush, to keep their backs to the wall and their bodies low, always ready to run. I watched with fascination how PB and Handsome started lounging in the open, limbs stretched out, breathing deeply, as if slowly forgetting a life that had once demanded vigilance. Was it possible they felt completely safe, and that in a world where true safety feels almost mythical, one can rewire even the nature of fear?

They became the first and last thing I thought about upon waking and before falling asleep, like some inexplicable pull towards presence and curiosity far less I-centric. I was enchanted, under the unspoken spell of fluffy tenderness, devoting myself to maintaining a connection to the bunnies in our universe. There was something ancient and wordless about being a protector, a provider, to care for two vulnerable, innocent, pure beings. Early humans and animals must have first crossed paths and felt a similar pull toward each other, perhaps even existing in a deeper subject-to-subject consciousness than we do now.

I was so used to suffering in that apartment, until they arrived and changed everything. Those days, I was constantly exhausted trying to afford a bleak quality of life in Toronto and then a white rabbit would jump onto my bed in the morning and make me feel like Snow White.

Tanya Tagaq, whom I used to serve at my restaurant job, told me that to raise a peaceful rabbit you must possess a gentle spirit. Gentle spirit, a north star function of my destiny, and gentleness requires ritualism, and moving in such a way has become a big part of my everyday life, trying to match the quiet energy and lightness of being of our sons, understanding that they are not here to scratch my itch for affection though they do.

Before the rabbits, I rarely laughed out loud when I was home alone, but now I find myself laughing all the time. All the technical words to describe the cutest shit they do sound like a euphemism for a baby fart; splooting, flopping, zoomies. It’s surely helped with my depression, being around them, whether through bouts of natural sadness (the teacher) or coping with compounding horrors and violence in the news cycle. Handsome and Pretty Boy, the sweet, goofy angels who can disarm my fears as love often does when it arrives out of the blue, and, by the way, Seth and I have come to understand that Handsome was never five years old when he arrived, sold on a story of being chosen last for his broken, charming ear. God bless the scammers.

We’ve been sitting in front of the burning fire for hours now. It’s snowing at Camp Flirty, our new home in Muskoka’s boreal forest, and they’ve both been binkying, which, if you don’t know, is when a rabbit leaps into the air and twists their body mid-flight, as if hit with a sudden jolt of electricity. It’s a bunny's way of literally jumping for joy. .

૮꒰ ˶• ༝ •˶꒱ა

Dear Universe, God, Queer Ancestors, Grandmothers and First Guitars, Spirit Guides, and Sources of Inspiration, please protect all those living in fear.

Love,

Ocean Michael Moon

Edited by my sis, June Moon