Charlie

Charlie is our bunny (the picture doesn't do him justice) who is the exact same color as my good friend's late cat, who was a Russian Blue. He is small, and he barely sheds, a rare feat for a bunny, as my family's experience with rabbits amply supports. He is perfect in his Charlie-ness.
Our former bunny, Ed (as in Edward Hopper) was perfect in his Ed-ness. Ed climbed up on our sofas and looked over our shoulders while we read. He ran across the family room carpet, not just hopping, but leaping into the air with verve. He hassled our poodles, running under Bear, the more timid one, and then, when Bear tried to escape, running under him again. I believe Ed considered our dogs as his own personal playmates, a conviction the dogs did not share.
Charlie is more quiet. How we acquired him was like this: Last winter, Ed became ill. Rabbits are terribly prone to digestive stasis, since they do not cough up fur, but ingest it. We treated stasis for a day or two and then called an exotics specialist who did immediate surgery on Ed. He died immediately following the surgery.
We were bereft, of course.
"Are you going to get another rabbit?, people asked. How could we replace the greatest bunny ever?
Now it so happened that shortly after Ed's death, while I was internally vowing that no other rabbit would do, our preschool hosted the petting zoo that had visit us for almost twenty years. I had traded rabbits with the owner, and received the father of many of our rabbits through the years from her. Her children and their spouses take the animals out to schools now. As our preschoolers took pony rides, and petted, or refrained from petting goats, chickens, lambs, and, yes, bunnies, I told my sad tale to the child of my former bunny benefactor.
"Is there any way I could, maybe, buy one of your rabbits?", I asked.
"Just take one", the young woman said. "Go on. Just pick one out".
Needless to say, this was grace at work. Once a mentor told me that rabbits were our family's healing animal. They drew out, from our rather driven and goal-oriented selves, a kind of wonder and delight. When I went looking among the rabbits that were trying to avoid the hands and legs our our giggling preschoolers, I found the little one with smokey blue-grey fur that felt like velvet; who kept looking at me after I'd picked him up and set him down again.
I'd found my bunny, and he went home with me that day.
We named him Charlie because he didn't look like any other name we could think of!
I still feel a soft, vulnerable place in my heart when I think of Ed. But Thomas Merton said that when he looked at a rabbit, he saw the rabbit-ness of God, and when he saw a man, he saw the humanity of God. When I look at Charlie, I see the Charlie-ness of God, and am thankful for the grace that brought him to us.
For information on rescue rabbits in Alexandria,
go to www.petfinder.com/shelters/VA151.html